South Africa: Zuma goes totally mad and charges miner survivors of "murder"

I never liked Jacob Zuma and now much less. He rose to power with a pseudo-lefty rhetoric and the support of the historical COSATU union but he's clearly a reactionary and his polygamous marriage and likely rapes are just a symptom of a most selfish personality who has regard for nobody, unless holding strong power (like the European-owned mining multinationals). 

The Marikana massacre is just the natural outcome of having that madman in power. But Zuma is surely just representative of how reactionary the ANC as a whole has become in the end.

Now the South African authorities are charging the few lucky survivors of the massacre with murder, go figure! The "logic", if any, behind it is the use of laws inherited from the Apartheid regime.

South Africa needs urgently a serious opposition by the left to the ANC and it needs such opposition to take power. The Marikana massacre and everything surrounding it has made it obvious.

Iosu Uribetxeberria to get conditional freedom

After all the popular and prisoners' struggle, this at least has been achieved. It's not much but at least it is something.

In what is no doubt a political rather than judicial decision (Spanish judges are anything but independent in most cases), the judge admitted that Basque prisoner and fighter Josu Uribetxeberria would be given conditional freedom, so he can at least spend his last days with his family at home. 

Source[eu]: Bilboko Branka.

Some three dozen other severely ill prisoners remain in jail, usually in very bad conditions. Together with many other Basque political prisoners, they are are being applied the Parot Doctrine, recently declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights but appealed by Spain, by which no prison benefits are applied to them. 

Meanwhile Spanish nationalist terrorists like colonel Galindo, culprit of many murders and tortures, enjoy their freedom after being in prison for a few months. They even get medals for their criminal services...

Among Basque political prisoners, some are ETA members like Uribetxeberria but many others are just politicians or people who dared to make use of their supposed freedom of speech, all of which should be considered prisoners of conscience.

Chile: students continue fighting: 150,000 march in Santiago

Some 150,000 students marched through Santiago de Chile in response to the claim by the reactionary far-right government that the students are not backing anymore their leadership in the struggle for free education.

The protesters were not just students but also people from other sectors of society who wanted to show their solidarity, such as teachers, economists, historians and others. 

For economist Marco Kremerman, the destruction of public education in Chile is only comparable to what happened in Haiti after the earthquake. 

As result of the repression instigated by the neo-Pinochetist President Piñera two minors were sent to hospital with their legs broken by police brutality. Outside the capital, in Valparaíso and Osorno, children were arbitrarily arrested.

All universities in Chile were stopped by the student walkout yesterday, with demonstrations gathering people by the thousands also outside the capital. Being in the Southern hemisphere, now it's mid-course in Chile.

Sources[es]: El Ciudadano, LINYM. 

Spain keeps Russian dissident in jail: risk of extradition

Russian dissident writer Piotr Silajev was arrested in Granada earlier this month. It was initially expected that he'd be released upon going through the judge but he is still retained and there is clear risk that Spain, a quite autocratic regime itself, will extradite the exile to Russia.

Silajev was granted political asylum in Finland earlier this year. In theory that assylum grant should apply to all Schengen Area states but you should always expect the worse when going to a Spanish court, so full of fascist judges with absolute power.

Sources and more details: Indymedia UK, LibCom, Anarchist Black Cross Belarus.

Basque Country: fascists damage monument to slaves of Fascism

The monument is located between Igari and Bidakonze, Navarre, at a road once built by the forced workers of the fascist regime in the 1940s, many of whom died there. The coward attackers took out the plate and damaged the flowers.

Source: Berria[eu].

Basque Country: home-made bomb against communications antenna

It is the first such kind of attack since ETA effectively initiated an unilateral truce some two years ago (the official declaration was later). It is surely not an action by ETA but it probably reflects the growing discontent among the Basque Nationalist Left grassroots as the peace process seems frozen in perpetual state repression. 

The home-made bomb damaged a TV and telephone antenna at Okendo and caused a fire that destroyed a hectare of eucalyptus plantation. 

Sources[es]: Sare Antifaxista, La Información.

Peasants under attack in Honduras: at least one murdered

The brutal greed of Miguel Facussé is again pushing peasants to their deaths as they attempt to get what the law concedes them.

In the district of the Bajo Aguán one cooperativist farmer, José Braulio Díaz López, was murdered by security guards of Facussé. Then police decomissed important documents for the legal transference of lands he carried with himself - but arrested nobody of the murderers.

In the Caribbean coast, at Vallecito, hundreds of Garifunas (an Afrodescendant and Native American community) have been for days under the very real threat of gunfire over their heads and even invasion of paramilitary units inside their village. 

This area near Trujillo, eyed by the US "Libertarian" mafias for their dystopic project of "model cities" are de facto under the undisputed control of drug-trafficking mafias, which I can only imagine are best friends of Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman and Paul Romer. 

Of course, not only these pirates are implicated, also the bloody hand of Facussé appears again in Garifuna territory. The cacique took over Punta Farallones in 1997, land that belongs to the Garifuna community of Limón (confirmed even by the Supreme Court). 

These abuses are only possible because the dictatorship, the Honduran state, does not offer even minimal protection to its citizens (de facto acting in defense of the mafiosi).

Source: LINYM[es]: link1, link2, link3.

Growing numbers in the Workers March that shatters Andalusia and Spain

Cádiz welcomed the Workers' March

In spite of the protests of the rotten paladins of private property and the stinky fascist right, the reality is that the symbolic but also real expropiations of supermarkets, occupations of banks and palaces and farmlands that is promoting the Andalusian Workers' Union (SAT) along with sympathizers in Andalusia, Extremadura and elsewhere, are being compared with Gandhi and Rosa Parks, who smashed the status quo with their active (never passive) disobedience and nonviolent uprising. 

Then it was the colonialist imposition, the despicable apartheid... now it is private property itself. We are getting closer to the essence of the problem.

They began taking public lands for the landless peasants, expropriating food at supermarkets for the have-nothings, invading the palace of a member of the royal family and taking a refreshing bath at the swimming pool, symbolically occupying an office of La Caixa bank, and everyday marching under the merciless sun of August in Andalusia against the international debt, against foreclosures, against the impunity of banksters and the other robber barons, for the agrarian reform and very specially for a basic income for all. 

Today they arrived to Cádiz, where tens of thousands went to the streets to welcome and share a moment with the people who are becoming the strange attractor of the Euro-chaos in the Southwestern corner of the subcontinental geography.

Athens: police heroin mafiosi shoot anarchists trying to expel dealers

Cops to anarchist vigilantes against drug trade: it is us who are in control of heroin, you have no idea what you got yourselves into.

From Occupied London - From the Greek Streets (bold type is mine):

Police fire bullets in Exarcheia

At approximately 16.50 on Saturday, August 25, a group of people tried to push away a couple of heroin dealers or users (still unclear) at the corner of Stournari Street and Kannigos Str, in Exarcheia. Some background to how this happened: The “unofficial” (but wholly sanctioned by the police) heroin trading spot has recently moved outside the Stournari gate of the Athens Polytechnic. In response, groups of anarchists and others have chosen the ambivalent tactic of forcibly moving dealers and users out of the area. 

This time round, the two dealers or users (as said, still unclear, with reports differing) called the police. In a few minutes, two motorcycles of the ZITA force appeared, chasing the group up to Exarcheia square. They snatched the last person in the group, and, according to an indymedia report they told them, “it is us who are in control of heroin, you have no idea what you got yourselves into”. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the group had reached Exarcheia square and joined by many others at the square, returned to attack the three delta motorcycles. In response, one of the ZITA police took out his gun and shot three times up, diagonally from the crowd. He then pointed his gun toward the crowd without shooting. The person who had at that time been detained by the police was freed. However, moments later, tens of DELTA and DIAS motorcycle police flooded Exarcheia square detaining and eventually arresting at least three people. 

So that's how it is in the end: police fascist drug-trafficking mafiosi threaten and arrest self-defense citizen groups. Democracy my ass!

Arctic almost without ice

The Arctic sea ice coverage reached a record low these days. There is even less ice than in the previous record of 2007 and it has yet to decrease even more before the partial recovery of the winter season. 

In 2008-2011 there was an unusually long and strong solar minimum, which is associated with lower global temperatures. However the temperatures of these years were just "normal". Now that the peculiar solar phase has ended, we should expect ever growing global temperatures for the next 9 or 10 years. 

So it is not like this ice minimum won't repeat itself until at least 2016 or 2017; instead we must expect less ice every single year (unless a super-volcano or something of the kind alters solar input levels, reducing temperatures). The truce of these last few years can be misleading for those ignoring the solar sunspot cycle.

This loss of Ice does not just affect the Arctic Sea but is correlated with loss of ice in all other locations: Antarctica, Greenland, mountain glaciers all over the world, permafrost under the tundra...

11-year-old Pakistani girl jailed for "blasphemy"

I'm sick of religious fanatic freaks who think that their miserable superstitions are sacrosanct and that human life and human freedom must be at the disposal of their mad fantasies of gods, angels, hells and heavens. You can believe whatever you wish, but I can mock your beliefs for what they are: the fantasy of madmen. 

The right of blasphemy is a human right, we must have the right to rebel against the tyrannic imaginary of the past, against dogma and against "God" if need be. And if there is a "Dog", oops: a "God", let it smite me... otherwise you must shut up and accept that we feel that your grotesque rituals and ridiculously illiterate "holy books" are a painful farce. That the scientific demonstration of the "God" hypothesis has failed... again.

Rimsha Masih, 11, was arrested at her hometown of Karachi and dumped in solitary confinement. It is not clear what she said, it is not clear if she is mentally sound or not and it is not clear even if she is 11 years old or 16. 

But whatever the case, Pakistan, a fundamentalist regime, is persecuting her for the crime of free thought and free speech. And those are rights and virtues, not crimes. 

Go to Hell with your damn fucking God!

Another food collectivization in Southern Iberia

Some 50 members of La Trastienda Collective and the Platform for the Basic Income in Extremadura have expropriated four trolleys of basic foodstuff in a Carrefour supermarket in Mérida, the regional capital. However police intervened and captured the trolleys at the exit.

Protesters claimed the sharing of wealth and a fairest and egalitarian society. The action was supported ex-post-facto by several high-profile politicians of United Left in Extremadura.

Source: Madriz Rebelde[es].

Navarrese Parliament: elects' sit-in for ill prisoners

The chain of protests for the liberation of terminally ill Basque prisoners continues. Now it is members of the Navarrese Parliament, belonging to Bildu and Nafarroa Bai!, who have initiated a sit-in within the walls of which is arguably the oldest elect parliament of all Europe. 

The seven deputies belong to political coalitions controlling 2/5 of the Navarrese Parliament. They are: Bakartxo Ruiz, Victor Rubio, Bikendi Barea, Aitziber Sarasola, Txentxo Jiménez, Asun Fernández de Garaialde  and Xabi Lasa. 

In the press conference, they have emphasized that this is a conflict that fully affects Navarre and the Navarrese political institutions, and that they hope with these actions to force these to take a more proactive role in defense of the rights of Basque prisoners. 

They have also denounced the prohibition (once again) of the national solidarity demonstration to be held today in Bilbao (instead there was occupation of the Eliptic Plaza) and have positioned themselves in support of all ongoing protests, such as the weekend fasts to be held in all four Southern Basque capitals. 

Source: Ateak Ireki[es].

Basque Country: 9 arrested, lots of police, against peaceful protest

In the same old line of fascist repression of everything Basque, Spanish police arrived in troves to repress a dozen protesters gathered in the Cathedral of Pamplona in solidarity with severely ill prisoners. 

Source: Ateak Ireki[es].

Part of the blame hoewever must be placed on the Catholic Church who were the ones which, after appropriating all the social production of the Basque People such as that cathedral, have decided to call the Spanish police. 

I'd say: reoccupy the cathedral to make a social center and deport all priests to the Vatican or Mecca. They deserve no mercy because they are the enemies of the People.


Update: the number of people arrested for peaceful protests in solidarity with severely ill Basque prisoners adds up to 17 so far To the nine arrested in the cathedral, add six others arrested in a protest at the ruling party's office and two others arrested in other two protests in Pamplona (government's delegation) and Mendilorri mountain.

Source: Ateak Ireki[es].

South African miner strike extends - symptom of widespread discontent

The Marikana massacre has only caused working class struggle to grow: two other platinum mines have been closed by walkouts and this may well be just a symptom of much wider problems. From Al Jazeera:

Thandi Modise, premier of North West Province where the platinum mines are located, warned on Tuesday that the protests may spread further if authorities don't deal with the massive and growing inequality gap that has many South Africans feeling they have not benefited in the 18 years since black majority rule replaced a racist white minority government.

Unlike North African states last year but like many European ones, the obvious problem in South Africa is not formal democracy or freedom of speech... it is real democracy: economic democracy by which the People and not just some oligarchic bloodsuckers controls the economy for our own benefit. 

This one is the revolution that has yet to be made: to put the economy under direct democratic control by the People and for the People.

35% of Japanese children suffer lumps, cysts

This figure is totally abnormal and must necessarily be caused by the radioactivity scattered by the Fukushima catastrophe and its criminal mismanagement by the government.

A series of ultrasound examinations conducted on over 40,000 children in Japan found 35 percent of the children to have lumps or cysts.

"That is not normal among children," Eisenberg, who is also a retired pediatrician, told DW. He added that the figure was alarming. He, along with some of his colleagues, requested access to Japan's birth statistics for the time since the disaster at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima. As of now, he is still waiting for access to be granted.

Source: DW (via EneNews).

Josu Uribetxebarria stops hunger strike

The struggle for the rights and dignity of Basque prisoners and for the democratic right of self-rule by the Basque People continues. 

Josu was in hunger strike for his dignity and rights and those of all prisoners and we Basques as People for 15 days in spite of suffering a terminal cancer.

The criminal intransigent attitude of the Spanish State has shown that the so-called "peace process" is a farce.

Source: Ateak Ireki[eu].

Flanders: nuclear reactor has "thousands of cracks"

Reactor number 3 at Doel nuclear power plant, near Antwerp, has not just one but probably thousands of cracks and cannot be restored.

[FANC Inspector Willy De Roovere] said the cracks are parallel to the surface of the walls and pose no immediate threat but the large number has left him concerned.

He said that permanent closure of the reactor is all but certain.

Sources: Power Engineering International, AFP, EneNews. 

Fascist Sudan wants to murder citizen for (allegedly) exerting her sexual freedom

Once again we are faced with the horror of religious fascism, in this case in Sudan, where a young woman, Layla Ibrahim Issa Jumul, 23, has been sentenced to death by stoning (without any evidence except her confession) for allegedly having free sexual relations outside marriage. 

The horror of the Patriarchal intolerance promoted by Saudi Arabia and Iran all around the World in their large but ultimately limited Muslim sectarian ghetto cannot simply be accepted. 

Weapons for women where they are oppressed because nobody will give you freedom: you must take it!

Free Layla! Because all people, women specially, have the full right to decide who they lay with and when. No father, brother or god should ever interfere in the free will of the people!

Ref. Amnesty International (PDF).

Currin: "set free all severely ill prisoners"

Protest today in Bilbao

South African attorney Brian Currin asked the Spanish government to set free all severely ill Basque prisoners immediately and, in general, to take decisive steps in favor of peace and reconciliation.

Spain agreed on Friday to concede the "third degree" (partial prison regime) to Uribetxeberria but he is still in full prison regime at hospital while an appeal is processed. He is only one of a dozen Basque prisoners who should be at home if only for humanitarian reasons because they have terminal illnesses. 

The national march called for today had to be suspended after the Spanish tribunals banned it on grounds of supposed "support of terrorism". Instead a more modest protest act took place in the morning under tight police surveillance. 

As you may know Uribetexeberria and hundred other prisoners are in hunger strike of other kinds of protests in the prisoner diaspora through most Southwestern Europe, where they have been scattered by the Neo-Roman imperialist states.

And these are the latest news of the most unlikely unilateral Basque peace process.

Sources: Naiz Info (link 1, link 2).


Update: the local fiestasbegin tonight and guess what: a police helicopter is hovering over our heads. But that here is "normal"... go figure!

Spain tries to censor contents in Google

The Spanish Agency of Data Protection (a government dependent agency) has been issuing way too many unjustified requests for search engine removal of sites that were critical with politicians and other public figures, totaling 270 requests only in the second half of 2011, of which Google accepted only 8%, considering the rest to be attempts of censorship.

Instead tribunals only issued 18 requests of which 78% were accepted.

Dorothy Chou, speaker of Google declared that:

This is very worrisome, not just because it endangers freedom of speech, but because some of these requests come from countries that could be not suspect, Western democracies normally not associated with censorship.

Source: Tercera Información[es].

Alternative market destroyed by police in Athens

From Occupied London - From the Greek Streets:

Riot police storm self-organised market building in Kypseli, Athens

At approximately 07.30 am on Saturday 18.8, riot police entered the building of the ‘municipal market’ of Kypseli, Athens. The building, long-abandoned by the local municipality, had been used as a self-organised space by groups of the antagonist movement for the past six years or so, hosting events, screenings, discussions but also acting as an alternative market. The Athens mayor (Kaminis) order the riot police to storm, retake and shut down the building.

Hungarian Nazi kicked for being Jewish

The founder of the terrorist group Hungarian Guard, infamous for its raids in Roma communities, has been expelled from the mother party Jobbik (of clear classical Nazi ideology, and disturbingly high electoral support) after it was known that his maternal grandmother was a Jewish survivor from Auschwitz. 

Source: Sare Antifaxista[es].

Mallorca: Nazi German tourists attack African street sellers

A large street fight broke out some days ago in Palma de Mallorca (Majorca, Catalan Countries) when a group of Nazi tourists from Germany insulted and attacked some African street sellers. The African community responded in kind and a fight ensued:

Ironically enough the locals remained neutral as if racism was not their problem. Similarly, when police arrived none of the German Nazis were arrested (Africans run away).

South Africa: police massacre miners at key platinum mine

I doubt that such a massacre was perpetrated even in the worst of South African Apartheid regime, at least they were very rare. 

Some 18 miners were massacred by scores of police armed only with live ammunition today in th context of a controversial ("illegal") strike in a platinum mine in Marikana (NW Province, South Africa). This massacre was preceded by other reported incidents in which 8 miners and two police agents died. 

Videos of the terrible massacre can be seen at Euronews (link 1, link 2) or at Brisbane News. While reports here and there claim that the miners were outflanking or attacking the police armed with machetes, what can be seen is scores of police agents with lethal weaponry shooting at what ends up being, after smoke dissipates, 18 corpse. 

The second Euronews link is probably the clearest video and it seems clear that the miners only maneouver in an apparent desperate attack AFTER police begins shooting at them.

3000 miners walked out in the key platinum mine (producing 12% of all global platinum) after a newly constituted independent union demanded a dramatic salary raise. The strike is opposed by the institutional union COSATU, akin to controversial President Jakob Zuma, which may have incited the first incidents for fear of losing their control of the South African Working Class.

The mine is owned by Lonmin corporation, a Capitalist residue of the British imperial past in the region (founded in 1909 as the London and Rhodesian Mining Company Limited). In spite of all the promises, the wealth of South Africa remains mostly in the hands of the old colonial masters, now with a Black management.

A Black management that seems to have no problem in massacring workers demanding what belongs to them. 

Shame on you, Zuma. Shame on you, COSATU. Shame on you ANC. You have become what you once fought against.

UK threatens to break in Ecuador's embassy

Downing Street claims that, under British law, a week advance notice would be enough to strip the embassy from diplomatic immunity. However such an assault would be almost unprecedented.

For example many North Korean refugees use the principle of (relative) extraterritoriality of embassies to gain asylum after reaching China. China does not assault embassies for that reason. Similarly Honduras did not assault the Brazilian embassy when legitimate President Manuel Zelaya used it as safe platform to gain back access to the country after the military coup.

Recent history is full of examples of not assaulting embassies on political refugees' crisis. So why would the United Kingdom circumvent this diplomatic principle in order to arrest someone who is accused of sex without condom? 

This kind of attitude only adds weight to the claims by Julian Assange that he is the victim of political persecution and not a common case of sexual misdemeanor. 

As you may know the defense of Assange claims that neither Britain nor Sweden nor much less his home state, Australia, guarantee his rights and that all them will probably end extraditing him to the United States where his human rights would be severely violated on emergency laws, with even risk of summary execution, never mind torture. 

Ref. Reuters.

Update:

Ecuador finally granted political asylum to Julian Assange after procrastinating on the matter for two months. The formal reason is that Assange risks being extradited to the USA, where his human rights would not be guaranteed. 

The United Kingdom has previously extradited even its own citizens to the USA, state with whom Great Britain has an unsymmetrical extradition treaty (the UK extradites its own citizens to the USA but not vice versa) which effectively makes it a vassal state at the same level of Colombia. 

It is unclear if Sweden or Australia could extradite Assange to the USA as well. 

Ref. Público[es].

Tunisia: Islamist government want to demolish women rights

From Uruknet:

Tunisian Women Stand to Lose Their Status

By: Nizar Maqni

August 13, 2012 As Tunisia celebrates the 56th anniversary of its Personal Status Law today, August 13, a new spanner was thrown into the works by the al-Nahda movement. The Islamic party proposed a constitutional clause which will stop women from being considered as equal to men by law; instead it says that they "complement" the role of men within the family. It started a few weeks ago when an al-Nahda MP, who is also a rapporteur for the new constitution, spoke about the role of women in the constitution. "Let us agree (before anything else), that women are human beings," he said. The statement was based on several theoretical principles that permeate the writings of Rashed Ghannoushi, who was crowned as head of the movement a few weeks ago. He had presented his theories in his book Women: Between the Quran and Muslim Reality. In the book, the mentor of the ruling troika said that "a woman’s unique features revolve around her sexual functions." Every "feature that a woman has is related to her sexual function and are a result of this function." This function "is a fundamental issue for women but secondary for men," he wrote, concluding that "the sexual function is the essence of the female." This regressive theory was plainly evident in al-Nahda’s proposal for Chapter 28 of the constitution regarding women’s rights. It managed to pass it in the Rights and Freedoms Committee with 12 votes to 8. "The state guarantees women’s rights and upholds their gains as a true partner of men; and their roles are complemented inside the family. The state guarantees equal opportunities for men and women in their various responsibilities and the elimination of all forms of violence against [women]," the chapter clearly indicates. The opposition presented a proposal which states that "the state guarantees women’s rights in all field and cannot enact laws that would detract from them in any way." But the bill was rejected by the Islamic group who then replaced it with their own text. In spite of the strong opposition, they forced their version of the law in to be voted on by the general meeting of the constituent assembly. Al-Nahda’s suggestion was vetoed throughout the Tunisian political spectrum, especially by civil society. This time, the "civil society veto" was a collective effort. In a joint statement, seven women’s and human rights organizations insisted on adherence to the principle of equality between men and women. They categorically rejected the suggestion of the Rights and Freedoms committee of the constituent assembly that claimed women merely complement the role of men inside the family. This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition. Source

Saudi Arabia orders citizens to "leave Lebanon immediately"

According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia has ordered its citizens to leave Lebanon "immediately", the state news agency reported in an SMS alert on Wednesday.

"The Saudi Arabian embassy in Lebanon calls all Saudi citizens to leave Lebanon immediately," the alert said, without elaborating.

Nothing else. But enough to get everybody worried, specially in Lebanon.

Ex-SKF comments that oil prices spiked after the advisory was known:

Update: 

With due caution it may be simply caused by the growing spillover of the Syrian civil war into Lebanon, with some kidnappings going on. 

Argentina: where Monsanto has license to kill

As you may know, pseudo-leftist developist governments like those of Brazil or Argentina are among the ones more corrupted by the bioterrorist business of Monsanto and the other GMO mafiosi.  Their star product is transgenic soy, which has been massively planted through much of Argentina and Brazil. 

This alleged high-production brand bases all its power in a gene that makes it immune to the pesticide Roundup, trade-marked and sold by the North American multinational itself. 

Sadly we, humans, do not have the immunity gene and are getting sick, literally poisoned as collateral damage, by the agricultural mafiosi, their godfather Monsanto and their facilitator President Cristina Fernández and her populist Justicialist Party (Peronist). 

Since the infamous agrobusiness began, more and more people are getting sick because of the pollution caused by the Roundup pesticide, which is sprayed from airplanes without consideration for anyone.  The citizens get malformations, cancers, leukemia, lupus, spontaneous abortions, cleft palate, etc. as result of the contamination, the ranchers, Monsanto and the Kirchnerist opportunist caste get the money. 

Protest in Córdoba against GMO farming

But of course the conflict does not only cause poisoning, it also kills in more direct ways, with bullets and other brutal methods. Ranchers' death squads have murdered the following people only in the last years:

• Javier Chocobar, shot down by corrupt police officers at the service of a businessman wanting to appropriate a quarry inside communal lands, October 12th 2009 in Chuchagasta (Tucumán).
  
• Sandra Juárez, 33, mother of two, killed by a bulldozer in a civil resistance action on March 13th 2010 in San Nicolás (Santiago del Estero).
• Roberto López, member of the Potae Napocna Navogoh community (La Primavera, Formosa), shot down by policemen on November 23rd 2010.
• Cristian Ferreyra, 23, activist of the Movimiento Campesino Santiago del Estero, murdered on Novemeber 16th 2011 at San Antonio.

Personally I try not to eat any soy nor maize not certified as organic, I carefully read ingredient labels when buying foodstuff like sausages, which are typically made of soy, but it's obviously not enough.

Source: La Voz[es].

USA still imports probably radioactive fish products from Japan

From Fukushima Diary:

US keeps importing fishery food from Japan even after 311

Some of the east Asian countries are rejecting Japanese products to import, such as fishery products or dairy products. (cf. JP exports of dairy products dropped half since 311, HK Gov to conduct medical check for infants)

However, US is still importing fishery products from Japan as before. In May, they measured cesium even from their local bluefin tuna. It seems like fish is easier to enter America than human beings. (cf. Cesium from tuna fished in west coast of America)

The exporting charts are like below. Fishery products consist of living, and frozen products. The source is the trade statistics of Japan by Ministry of finance. [Link] (cf. Cesium from 60% of fishery products in Fukushima)

... full story with graphs at Fukushima Diary. 

Navarre: more arrests for showing solidarity with political prisoners

The reasons of the arrests are arbitrary ("threats" for example) but the fact is that the Spanish police forces are arresting Basque citizens (so far in Navarre exclusively) for showing their solidarity with Basque prisoners. 

Another person was arrested today at the weekly protest in Sarriguren and brought to the Guardia Civil barracks in Pamplona.

Source: Ateak Ireki[es].

Stiglitz and Fernández: Europe has not learned from Argentina

Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz declared at a conference in Buenos Aires that Europe has not learned from Argentina, applying instead a policy set that has only worsened things very quickly.

The Neo-Keynesian (= state-controlled Capitalism) economist criticized the Washington Consensus (Neoliberalism) as holding ideas that have been once and again demonstrated as false, causing a debt crisis after another, because they only criticize the borrower while the lender is at least equally responsible and should be hold to at least the same standards if not higher (because it is the lender who willingly assumes the risk and the one who is supposed to know best about who can pay back and who cannot).

Stiglitz explained that there was an international project to forge a consensual frame for ordered sovereign bankruptcies but that it was vetoed by George Bush Jr. 

For Stiglitz the problems of the weakest European economies are similar to those of Argentina in 2001-02. Not just, like "dollarized" Argentina, these European states have lost the ability to play with the exchange rate and the creation of money out of the blue, but also they have in some cases (Spain, Ireland) assumed the debts of broken private banks.

Exactly the same leaders who blamed governments were the ones who demanded that the State took charge of the problems of the private sector.

He criticized these bail-outs of the USA and Europe as anti-Capitalist (i.e. as a sabotage of free markets), allowing a form he calls "bad Capitalism" to continue thriving.

The Argentine President Cristina Fernández shared this idea arguing that people not having enough for the refrigerator, the car or the home is not Capitalism.

Stiglitz praised the Argentine model as the correct way to manage Capitalism, that an economy can go ahead if the crisis is managed properly. 

Source: Página 12[es].

Criticism:

The Argentine (or Brazilian) success, the same as the Chinese or Indian ones can well be largely a mirage. While obviously draining the people dry to pay the debts to the banksters is unjust, inefficient and a clear sign of  the parasitic decadence of the late Capitalist regime, the growth of these developing economies is driven by other factors, mostly globalization and exports.

This implies displacement of at least part of the productive economy from the former Center (1st World) to the former Periphery (3rd World) because of much reduced labor and environmental (= exploitation) costs. This process has been ongoing for decades now, although these four economies (and some others) only clearly benefited since the 1990s and very specially in this last decade. 

But lacking for the most part solid internal markets (which imply higher exploitation costs), these economies are almost totally oriented to exports. And for that they depend on affluent (and decadent) import markets like the USA and Europe. As these are becoming less and less affluent because of the crisis and, at least in the case of Europe, the rigid "importist" hyper-strong euro only serves to aggravate the whole process, retaining the markets a little more but devastating the economy forever, the economic engine that drives the peripheral growth is surely faltering and no doubt these should at the very least stagnate soon. 

In fact there are signs that this is already happening. 

There is a key problem in the predatory, exploitative and destructive hidden nature of the concept growth that is not coming to light with this dialectic farce of Keynsians vs. Friedmanites. Both are wrong because Capitalism itself is wrong, not accounting for human and very specially environmental costs. 

These costs must be accounted for and that implies that only zero growth (plus solar energy input) exists and that we can only grow as much as we can use solar energy efficiently. So far we are using it very inefficiently (fossil reserves, massive environmental devastation) and that is not viable. 

Only Eco-Communism can work in this century: low, zero or even willing negative growth, widespread equality, both political and economic democracy, respect for the planet we live in and no private property anymore. Meanwhile, here or in Argentina, we are bound to pay the hidden costs with our lives.

France: Amiens burns overnight

An indelicate arrest amidst growing police-neighbor tensions triggered a riot in the suburbs of Amiens, the capital of Picardie in Northern France, considered among the poorest and most conflictive areas of the Republic.

The conflict, which is reminiscent of the 2005 and 2007 banlieue riots, has only been responded by President Hollande with the announcement of hard police measures, demonstrating that he is not substantially different from his predecessor the arrogant ultra-conservative Sarkozy. 

While the average French youth unemployment is 23.5% in the impoverished class ghettos known as banlieues it can be just massive, causing immense frustration.

Refs. NY Daily News, Hürriyet Daily News.

Basque Country: arrest and identifications seek to deter solidarity with prisoners

One person arrested in Pamplona and many identified by police is the result of institutional repression against those showing their solidarity with Basque prisoners and demanding specifically the release of Josu Uribetxeberria, Iñaki Erro and the other 14 Basque prisoners with serious illnesses. 

The protests will continue.

Hundreds of Basque prisoners are in hunger strike or adopting other forms of protest in solidarity with Josu Uribetxeberria, who is dying in jail.

Source: Ateak Ireki[es].

Crack seals the destiny of Flemish nuclear reactor

Which energy source is safer?

One of the four nuclear reactors at Doel Nuclear Power Plant, near Antwerpen, will have to be closed forever because the crack in the reactor vessel is impossible to repair. 

A second nuclear reactor may also be closed because of similar reasons at the Tihange power plant near Liege (Wallonia). These are the two only meaningful nuclear power plants in the Kingdom of Belgium. 

The Dutch firm, Rotterdam Drydocks, that made the vessels is out of business, which has amplified concerns about others it delivered in Europe and in the Americas.

Spain has indicated it has two reactors in the same bracket, Switzerland and Sweden one each.

Representatives of nuclear safety bodies from all the countries involved will meet in Brussels on August 16 to "exchange information," the AFCN said.

Sources: France 24, Ex-SKF. 

Greece: Golden Dawn office set alight

From Occupied London - From the Greek Streets:

Office of neo-nazi Golden Dawn in Pagrati, central Athens set alight with petrol

 

The office of the neo-nazi gang Golden Dawn (as of recently also represented in parliament) in the central Athenian neighbourhood of Pagrati was set ablaze on August 13, with two small petrol tanks. The neo-nazi gang is openly advocating violence against all migrants, homosexuals and leftists/anarchists. Its members have participated in scores of such attacks and they are the prime suspects for the assassination of a young Iraqi national in Athens on August 12.

According to the Union of Migrant workers, more than 500 migrants have been hospitalised in recent months after being attacked with clubs and knuckledusters. The perpetrators enjoy some unparalleled immunity; more than 1 in 2 members of the police force voted for Golden Dawn in both recent elections.

Asturias: police violence and arrests in anti-bullfights demo

Some 400 people took part in a protest against bullfights in Xixon, Asturias (under the boot of the Kingdom of Spain). 

After some exchange of insults between those celebrating animal torture and humanitarian protesters, police, which is anything but neutral, charged against some demonstrators, arresting one. 

This person was apparently subject to beatings inside the police van, what caused other protesters to inquire for his situation, to which police responded with more violence and more arrests, as can be seen in the video:

Source: Madriz Rebelde[es].

Basque prisoners in total hunger strike

Some 230 prisoners in the forced diaspora through French and Spanish prisons have joined the hunger strike demanding the legally compulsory and humanitarian release of Iosu Uribetxeberria, who is dying of a never properly treated cancer - one of the many examples of why the Spanish prisons are considered to be extermination centers in what affects Basque prisoners. Those who have not joined the hunger strike without end, have begun other protests like not leaving the cell or more limited fasting.

Source: Ateak Ireki[eu].

Egypt: the end of the Military Junta

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi ordered the retirement of all the top generals in the Egyptian Armed Forces, naming people of his preference instead. The chief of the secret services was replaced beforehand. He also annulled all the provisions added to the constitution by the Junta, provisions that curtailed the President's power and turned it to the Junta instead. 

The power to impose such a measure is not in the constitution nor the law (even if one could argue so) but in the masses who took Tahrir Square to support him in his day of action. Even Machiavelli reckoned that the support of the people was important for any prince... even if he could not conceive the fundamental importance of the popular masses in our day, able to stop a whole army just with the power of dare.

While, from a revolutionary viewpoint, this is pretty much anecdotal skirmishes between two reactionary forces: the Junta, subservient to US Imperialism and Zionist interests, and the religious reactionary party of the Muslim Brotherhood (historically akin to Hamas, i.e. "moderate islamist"), the incident is nevertheless of some historical relevance for Egypt and the overall region and is clearly a blow to US-Zionist imperialism and a reaffirmation of Egyptian sovereignty on elected civilian (albeit reactionary) hands.

Egypt has not been, I understand, so independent since Nasser. However the leadership is now extremely different in their ideology.

Update:  It is very noticeable that the new defense minister, General Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, is already infamous in the country for his responsibility in the scandal of the "virginity tests" which some army units used to humiliate arrested women protesters in the height of the Egyptian Revolution. He is believed to have close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a clearly sexist reactionary force.

The other appointments are so far unremarkable.

Mexican Peace March crosses into USA

The Caravan for Peace, Justice and Dignity (Caravana por la Paz, Justicia y Dignidad) will cross today into US territory at the border between the two Californias (Tijuana - San Diego) to demand that the USA stops providing weapons to the Mexican mafias. 

Some 12% of all weapon shops in the USA are located near the border with Mexico, what clearly means that they live off selling to the Mexican mafias. The figures are disputed depending on the sources (12,000 out of 100,000 vs 6,700 out of 55,000) but the overall percentage is similar.

Of particular concern is the sale of assault weapons, which was restricted in the USA between 1994 and 2004. 

While the issue of illegal immigrants crossing the border from south to north is often in the limelight in the USA, the reverse of the same coin: huge amounts of weapons crossing the border from north to south illegally as well, is never considered.

In the words of the founder of the pacifist movement, Fernando Ocegueda, a small businessman who lost his son to the mafioso violence that ravages Mexico:

We don't have great hopes because nobody seems to pay attention to us. We know that the sale of weapons is at great scale. Our goal is to raise awareness so not so many are sold indiscriminately to be smuggled into our country anymore.

The caravan is formed by some 70 people (54 of which are victims of the mafioso violence) and plans to cross all the USA from San Diego to Washington D.C.  They claim that Washington stops its direct support to the Mexican Armed Forces, and that it uses that budget instead for humane security actions. They also demand the demilitarization of the US-Mexican border and to stop the criminalization of Mexicans in the USA. 

One of the activists, poet Javier Sicilia explained:

We want to say to the People of the United States that our dead acquaintances are behind their addictions and their weapons. 

(...)

If  there is political will [the White House] can stop that flow. The Mexican Government chose war. We have been dumped into a war. Now we demand that they build peace instead.

Route of the Caravan for Peace (each dot is a day)

Sources and more details: IPS[es], Caravan for Peace[en/es]

Moruroa atoll risks collapse: would cause radioactive tsunami

One of the nuclear tests at Moruroa

For those old enough to remember the 1980s or even earlier decades, the name Moruroa (also spelled Murorua, Mururoa, Mururua) should clearly evoke images of nuclear tests, Greenpeace campaigns and the French terrorist attack against the Rainbow Warrior, killing eco-pacifist photographer, Fernando Pereira. 

Eventually the nuclear testing was stopped (1995) but the very structure of the atoll was left damaged and extremely radioactive. 

Now Murorua e Tatou, citing a leaked report from the French Ministry of Defense (March 2010), says that the atoll may well collapse, causing a tsunami as much as 15 m tall bringing huge loads of French-made plutonium and other radioactive materials all around the Pacific Ocean.

Source and more details: ABC News (h/t Ex-SKF).

Iraqi murdered in Athens' racist attack

From: Occupied London - From the Greek Streets:

Iraqi migrant assassinated in central Athens in the early hours of Sunday August 12

At approximately 04.30 am on Sunday August 12, an unidentified Iraqi male was found stabbed in the streets of Athens (on Anaxagora Street). According to eye-witnesses, the perpetrators of the attack where five males riding four motorbikes who, just earlier on, in the same area, had tried to attack another two migrant males (citizens of Romania and Morocco) and who managed to escape. This is an apparent racist, lethal attack.

More info as it comes.

Contaminated Japanese vehicles and spare parts exported to Russia

This is how you destroy the reputation and the economy of an exporting country: pretending everything is fine when it is not.

From Fukushima Diary:

On 7/27/2012, Ria Novosti reported radioactive contaminated cars from Japan were seized by Russian custom at Korsakov port in the south part of Sakhalin.

High level of radiation was measured from the body of a micro bus, cabin of a truck, and “Demio” of Matsuda. It was 2.5 times higher than back ground (0.15 ~ 0.18 μSv/h).
They are still loaded in the liner.

Additionally, on 8/10/2012, the public relations section of the custom office in Sakhalin announced 2 cars and repair parts loaded on the ship from Japan were seized for radioactive contamination again.

Those cars were exported for individuals, repair parts were purchased by a private company in Sakhalin.

They measured gamma ray twice as back ground like before. The nuclide is reported to be Cs-137.

The contaminated parts were sent to Russian consumption supervision agency for analysis. Until they make countermeasures, the cars and repair parts are kept in the ship again.

Pussy Riot trial: closing statement

Yekaterina Samutsevich (pictured), from Pussy Riot, issued the following closing statement at the political trial that the Russian Inquisition and Fascist regime have brought on them for challenging that totalitarism:

During the closing statement, the defendant is expected to repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to express my views about the causes of what has happened with us.

 The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.

How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.

It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance.

Implementing this thoroughly interesting political project has required considerable quantities of professional lighting and video equipment, air time on national TV channels for hours-long live broadcasts, and numerous background shoots for morally and ethically edifying news stories, where in fact the Patriarch’s well-constructed speeches would be pronounced, helping the faithful make the right political choice during the election campaign, a difficult time for Putin. Moreover, all shooting has to take place continuously; the necessary images must sink into the memory and be constantly updated, to create the impression of something natural, constant and compulsory.

Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out” violated the integrity of this media image, generated and maintained by the authorities for so long, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to combine the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.

Perhaps such an unpleasant large-scale effect from our media intrusion into the cathedral was a surprise to the authorities themselves. First they tried to present our performance as the prank of heartless militant atheists. But they made a huge blunder, since by this time we were already known as an anti-Putin feminist punk band that carried out their media raids on the country’s major political symbols.

In the end, considering all the irreversible political and symbolic losses caused by our innocent creativity, the authorities decided to protect the public from us and our nonconformist thinking. Thus ended our complicated punk adventure in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we now expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. Now the whole world sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, Russia looks different in the eyes of the world from the way Putin tries to present it at daily international meetings. All the steps toward a state governed by the rule of law that he promised have obviously not been made. And his statement that the court in our case will be objective and make a fair decision is another deception of the entire country and the international community. That is all. Thank you.

From Jews sans frontieres, from Chtodelat.

Protests return to Tunisia a year later

The problem is clearly not just a matter of human rights and formal democracy. That also maybe but it is clear that the problem facing all the Mediterranean Basin, Arab, Latin or other, is a problem of jobs and workers' dignity. 

And the only way to solve it is true socialism: with job sharing and wealth sharing among all and no more inequality and injustice.

Meanwhile class war will persist, because it is here to remain.

Tunisia has seen intermittent protests since the elections that gave power to the Islamists (conservatives) but now clashes have increased and affect the very town that sparked the Arab Spring, Sidi Bouzid, the center of a miner and working class hardened district.

Ref:  Euronews (link 1, link 2).