Islamist terror: nobody points to the culprits

First of all my condolences and solidarity with the victims of the Brussels attacks. Nobody surely deserves that but much less random civilians. 

But then I must say that, when Hollande and others talk of "war", they are not declaring "war" to the perpetrators but to the victims. Because the only victim of the police state is the common citizen, just as the victims of the terror attacks: the police state, the emergency laws are not any solution but exactly what the terrorist bosses intend. 

Even more bewildering is that nobody is declaring sanctions, war or whatever other punitive measure against those states who support DAESH. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the most prominent and unrepentant ones, with lots of evidence pointing to them in spite of the discourse: the DAESH could not exist without them: Turkey controls its supplies routes but only feigns to "attack" DAESH as a pretext to murder Kurds, Saudi Arabia is not only the main human source of the terror group but also the principal financier and has been moving many of them between Syria/Iraq and Yemen, according to their priorities. Saudi Arabia has been in fact for four decades already behind Sunni Islamist terror worldwide, initially (1980s) in Afghanistan and Algeria primarily but then worldwide. Of course neither of these two could have ever done anything without the support of the United States and its local colony: Israel. While Israel has hidden better its own trail, the USA is well known to have created DAESH and equipped it. To this day it has done nothing to stop Turkey and Saudi Arabia from keeping the terrorist monster alive, on the contrary, it seems that "the problem" for them is only the legitimate governments of Damascus and Baghdad. 

So when are the sanctions and blockade against Saudi Arabia begin? When will Turkey be expelled from NATO and denied any kind of credence by the European Union? If you guys want to make "war" against DAESH terrorism, that's the way to go: attacking, not necessarily by military means, the states that support it, namely Turkey and Saudi Arabia (as well as others, but primarily these two rogue regimes). 

As far as anyone knows neither Iran, nor North Korea, nor Syria, nor Russia, nor any of the capricious victims of US-orchestrated imperialist sanctions supports the DAESH in any way, instead "our allies" do, "we" do. Why are "we" bombing ourselves? Should not we declare "war" on "us" (or should I capitalize "US")?

Let's get real: this is not a time for hystery nor for rallying the masses around those who support DAESH against a ghostly threat. The threat is within NATO, it controls state and even imperial level resources, and therefore the only possible "war" is internal within the imperial alliance against all those who feign outrage but actually allow or even promote this kind of senseless terror. We must wake up, this is just the burning of the Reichstag at another scale and, as soon as we scratch the surface, we can't but know it. 

The enemy is inside, the war, the only possible war, the only logical and fruitful one, is against those who control DAESH inside our very own states and imperial alliance.

In Brussels also police attacks the right to demonstrate

A peaceful demonstration of the quasi-official and rather sheepish European Confederation of Worker Unions (ETUC) in Brussels, protesting against the so called "austerity" (for the working class only), was gratuitously attacked by police with water cannons. Activists defended themselves against this instance of state terrorism in any case.

This illustrates how fascism, that is: the suppression of the most basic rights such as the right to demonstrate, is taking over all Europe, from Ukraine to Spain and from Turkey to Belgium.

This is coincident (and not by mere coincidence but because of intentional planning) with the increase in aggressiveness of openly fascist violent squads, which work as mercenaries for the bourgeois elites, trying to instill terror among those who dare to resist one way or another. 

Any day we will wake up in a death camp and wonder how could it all go so wrong. The answer is simple: 

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller

Belgium, Catalonia: anti-capitalist sabotages

This month there have been several anti-capitalist sabotages in Western Europe:

Belgium:

(Dated to September 12th)

A large telecommunications station in Koningslo, near Brussels, was destroyed by fire arson. Flames reached 50 m. high and firefighters needed many hours to stop the fire. Regional communications of Base and Movistar were interrupted, the damage is set to affect the communications for months. 

A police car was set on fire before the Mortsel station. Apparently it is a revenge for the killing by beating of a youth two years ago in those dungeons. It is already the second such attack.

At Dinant, a forestal truck was set on fire. Again this is the second such attack with an apparently ecologist background, as permission to exploit forests has been expanded in Belgium recently. 

In Louvain, a bank office was also arsoned.

Source: Contra Info.

Catalonia:

In September 16th, locks of the offices of energy company Endesa were sealed in protest against the construction of very high voltage line.

Source: Contra Info.

Gladio: NATO's shadow state (II)

I continue here synthesizing the most important historical data provided by Daniele Ganser at Voltaire Network in Spanish and French on NATO's secret army, popularly known by its Italian codename Gladio. 

As we saw in the previous entry, Andreotti's confessional discourse revealed that Gladio existed in all other NATO member states and that it was a NATO organization under US ultimate control. His discourse took place however on August 2nd 1990, the very same day in which Saddam Hussein's Army (baited by Washington, who winked to him implying that it was a well earned prize for its efforts against Iran) invaded Kuwait.

The non-free European media saw in that developing conflict the perfect excuse to ignore, as much as possible, the murky story of Gladio. However some investigations did took place, notably in Belgium. 

Most governments tried to avoid the matter altogether or at least minimize its relevance. The most notorious were the British, whose ministers declined again and again to make any comment "on security issues". The Parliament also avoided pushing any investigation.

France explicitly denied the existence of such network in its soil, claiming that it had been disbanded in the 1950s. Andreotti replied that France was present in the latest meeting of the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), the command of the stay-behind network, in 1990, what forced the authorities to argue that it was just a preemptive force which played not active role.

Portuguese authorities also stepped in to deny that the local Gladio branch was used in defense of the Fascist regime of Salazar. However a retired general contradicted them. 

In Spain, Minister Oliart laughed at the questions by journalists as naive: "here the government itself was Gladio", he said, meaning the fascist government of Franco. However the incipient investigation on the continuity of the Spanish Gladio after 1978 were curtailed by simply firing the journalists researching the matter, as I recall clearly. 

In Denmark the minister in charge was contradictory, appealing to the confidentiality of the matter, while denying the existence of the secret state in the most vague terms. 

In Norway, the authorities acknowledged the existence of the local Gladio but rejected to discuss its details on the grounds of being top secret. 

Luxembourg also acknowledged the existence of the stay-behind network but denied that it had any other activity than being prepared for the event of a hypothetical Soviet invasion. 

In the Netherlands the Prime Minister assumed all the responsibility and denied that the network was under NATO command. 

Greece was the first state to be splashed by the Gladio scandal after Italy. The Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou claimed with his characteristic cold blood that, as soon as he discovered the existence of such secret army in 1984, he commanded its elimination. Some MPs demanded an investigation to find out the role played by the Greek Gladio in the fascist dictatorship but the government ignored them. 

In Germany there was some investigation on demand of the Green Party, while the media revealed that former members of the SS took part in the secret army. Not just in Germany: in other countries also extreme right activists had been recruited into Gladio.

Hans Klein, Speaker of Helmut Kohl's government appealed to military secrecy in order not to reveal any details. The opposition used the scandal for the upcoming elections, being a clear case of unconstitutional structure, which was even compared to the Ku Klux Klan.

A parliamentary commission was created. In it Burkhard Hirsch, on charge of the secret services in Kohl's government, recognized he was very unease with the matter, claiming that he had never heard of it before. He said with unusual sincerity for a spy chief:

If something can remain secret for so long, and you can trust my long experience, is because there is something rotten. 

As soon as the conservative government declared that the socialdemocrat ministers of past governments were also privy to those secrets, the SPD abandoned all belligerence. Therefore the commission met in secret in spite of the protests of Die Grünen. 

One wonders what role played this secret organization in the murder of Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian just a couple of years later. Back in the day it was rumored that they were in the course of investigating something big, possibly this very imperial secret army.

The biggest investigation took place in Belgium, where PM Wilfried Martens declared to ignore everything about it. He said with apparent worry:

I have been Prime Minister for the last eleven years but I have always ignored the existence of a network in our country. 

The investigation revealed that the actual commander of the Belgian Gladio was the secret service boss General Raymond Van Calster. Van Calster initially denied everything but later he admitted that it existed with a mere intelligence goal for the hypothetical event of a Soviet invasion. 

There was great worry because, as in Italy, indiscriminate terrorist attacks had been performed against the civilian population. In 1980, mysterious men dressed in black opened fire against supermarket customers in Brabant, killing many.

But maybe the most striking case with repercussions reaching to this very day was the Turkish one. Ankara admitted that Gladio existed in the country and pretended, as in other states, that it was a mere passive network in preparation of a Soviet invasion. 

However it soon became known by mouth of former PM Bülent Ecevit that the Turkish network, eventually known as Ergenekon, was deeply involved in tortures, terrorist attacks and murders.

In 1996 a car accident at Susurluk killed three not-so-unlikely buddies: a member of the anti-Kurdish terrorist groups, a top police officer and a member of Parliament. Thousands protested against the "deep state".

Two years later, PM Mesut Ylmaz had to acknowledge the existence of a death squad at the very heart of the state with full knowledge of the authorities. The Ergenekon case was only brought to trial recently, but it seems that only some of those involved have been prosecuted, those against whom Erdogan's Islamists wanted revenge. The bulk are probably still at large.

Main source[es]: Daniele Ganser "Cuando se descubrió el Gladio en los Estados europeos…" (also available in French).

25.000 Europeans besieged the ECB

Belgian police violently attacked the thousands who protested against the class tyranny imposed by the EU and the ECB in yet another example of the anti-democratic rule of the European Union.

The protesters holding banners reading slogans like "people before profits" found in their own bodies what "democracy", "freedom" and "human rights" seem to mean for the European oligarchs: "shut up and obey", not at all different from Mussolini, Hitler and their other fascist clowns of terror. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Belgium: political raids against anti-authoritarians

On May 22nd Belgian police forces raided the library Acrata and three homes inhabited by people of Anarchist and Autonomist ideas. Every single person present in the raids were arrested. 

The initial charges are major: membership in a terrorist organization, conspiracy and arson. However, after (failed) interrogation all them were set free without even going through court.

In the raids police confiscated all kind of documents, personal belongings, computers, mobile phones, etc. 

The political operation is led by Judge Isabelle Panou. 

Source: Contra Info.

Belgium will restart two dangerously cracked reactors

The government claims to have "no power" to stop that atrocity from happening, alleging that regulatory agency and owner corporation, GDF Suez, are "independent". 

Obviously the government has all the power to intervene but they clearly prefer to risk the health and safety of the people of Belgium and much of Europe than rein on the Nuclear Mafia. 

It would be pathetic would not be for the fact that the lives of millions are at risk because of this daredevil decision.

Greenpeace will sue the Belgian government. However for when the judicial decision comes, if ever, it may well be too late. 

The two Belgian nuclear reactors, Doel 3 and Tihange 2, were stopped last year after thousands of small cracks were detected in them (c. 8000 and 2000 respectively). They represent a third of Belgian nuclear energy capacity. 

Source: Ex-SKF (citing Reuters, Euronews and Asahi Shinbun).

Caterpillar Inc.: enemy of Humankind

In Palestine as in Belgium, the construction vehicles multinational is working against the People with particular belligerance and lack of any scruples.

From Electronic Intifada:

Caterpillar destroys livelihoods in Europe and Palestine

Submitted by david on Mon, 03/25/2013 - 23:29

 

 

Palestinians pay tribute to Rachel Corrie on the tenth anniversary of her murder — with the aid of a Caterpillar bulldozer. 
(Nedal Eshtayah / APA images)

Like many Palestine solidarity activists, I’ve long regarded Caterpillar as a callous firm. A trip to the Belgian city of Charleroi over the weekend reinforced this view.

Caterpillar recently announced that it is shedding 1,400 jobs from its Charleroi plant. The measure has been presented as “indispensable” for reasons of “competitiveness” by Nicolas Polutnik, the plant’s chief executive. His rationale merits contempt. Caterpillar, which raked in a profit of almost $5.7 billion last year, is lengthening the dole queues in a city where unemployment already exceeds 20 percent.

War against workers

Far from having no other option than to “downsize,” it is waging an ideological war against workers’ rights. As the second largest US employer in the country, Caterpillar plays an active role in the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium. This grouping has seized on the global economic crisis to try and unravel hard-won gains by the country’s labour movement. One of the chamber’s top targets at the moment is automatic wage indexation — a requirement that employers increase their workers’ pay when the cost of living rises.

Caterpillar’s cruel disregard for the firm’s own employees chimes completely with its support for Israeli apartheid. Documents published by the Israeli embassy in Brussels list Caterpillar machines made in Charleroi as being among Belgium’s top exports to Israel.

Brazen dishonesty

Almost two years ago, I confronted Paolo Fellin, a Caterpillar vice-president, over how his company’s bulldozers were being used to destroy Palestinian homes. Fellin replied: “If our products end up in certain parts of the world, then I have no control over that.”

His dishonesty was brazen. Fellin’s area of responsibility included the Middle East, so — unless he was incompetent — he knew a thing or two about Zoko, which acts as Caterpillar’s Israeli dealer. Zoko’s own website has a section dedicated to its work for the Israeli army. The section explicitly states that Zoko has tweaked vehicles so that they can be used for military purposes: the distinctive black, yellow and white Caterpillar logo can be seen on some of the vehicles in question. This amounts to an admission of guilt in facilitating war crimes.

Weapon of occupation

Rachel Corrie is the best known victim of those crimes. It is only correct that we salute her bravery and selflessness on the tenth anniversary of her murder. Caterpillar cannot be allowed evade responsibility for this abominable act. Yes, it was an Israeli soldier who crushed her to death as she tried to stop him from demolishing a home in Gaza. But the Caterpillar bulldozer he was driving had been transformed especially so that it could serve as a weapon of dispossession and occupation.

A decade later, Caterpillar’s vehicles are still being used for those purposes. As Joe Catron reported last week, Israeli troops have ruined farmland inside Gaza — with the aid of Caterpillar bulldozers — over the past few months.

While in Charleroi, I learned that shortly before management announced the job losses, local Palestine solidarity activists had been in contact with trade unionists representing Caterpillar’s workers. Despite the company’s dealings with Israel, the unionists were sympathetic to the Palestine solidarity movement, I was told. That didn’t surprise me: the labour rights movement in Belgium is generally supportive of efforts to dismantle Israeli apartheid.

It is entirely understandable that saving their own jobs is now the top concern of Caterpillar’s workers. But this shouldn’t mean that Palestine solidarity campaigners should stop reaching out to these workers - or those who remain once the management implements its “restructuring plan.”

Caterpillar appears intent on destroying livelihoods in both Europe and Palestine. Taming this corporate monster requires building the broadest possible alliance.

Boycott Caterpillar!

Former President of Belgian Central Bank: the system is designed to work as it is

All the video is quite worth watching but a key moment is around 5'20" when he explains how the monetary system is institutionally conceived to exist as it is, without any room for improvement.

It is designed to work "poorly" for a reason, not well explained in the video: to make sure that all the wealth goes to a few hands and that the international system remains organized in a hierarchical form in which each country or region plays its specific role in a hierarchy: financial center, industrial center, industrial periphery and the role reserved form most: neo-colony.

That part is not explained in the video properly, possibly because the speaker is after all an economist of the bourgeois school, still believing in chimeras like free market or democracy without equality. 

For us that means yet another reason for Revolution and to lose any hope (if we still had any) in Keynesian reforms: the Capitalist system has no room for meaningful reforms, only for radical transformation into something essentially different: Communism.

Source for the video: Naked Capitalism.

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. 

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. 

Belgium: general strike at EU summit

First general strike in Belgium in 20 years paralyzed the state yesterday in the day of a major Euro-summit:

Naturally they were protesting those same austerity plans (for the working class, not for the rich nor their political minions) that the EU "leaders" ("leader" now seems to mean "enemy") are promoting in their orgies of rights' demolition. 

From PO.

Political pressures block Flemish resolution of support to Basque Peace Process

An ample consensus had been achieved in the preliminary work in the Flemish Parliament in support of a resolution that demanded from the Spanish Government and Parliament to take a more constructive approach to the Basque Peace Process (and also to the illegitimate government in the Western Basque Country). The initiative gathered the support of all Flemish political parties (but the fascist Vlaams Belang, isolated by all other parties): the New Femish Alliance, the Christian-Democrats of Flanders, the Socialist Party, the Greens, the Liberal-Democrats and the Flemish Movement.

However it has been reported now that some of the supporters of this initiative have decided to drop it after pressures of the Spanish political parties. After some attempts to introduce amendments that would turn the resolution into nothing, the initiative was pulled back.

The failed resolution (which had already passed the commission of foreign affairs) asked:

1. To the Spanish and Western Basque governments to give constructive response to the ceasefire by ETA and promote the Peace Process in a constructive manner.
2. To the Flemish government to support the Peace Process in the various European forums it belongs to.
3. To the Flemish government to pay due attention to violations of human, civil and political rights in the Basque Country.
4. To the Belgian government to follow the Flemish government in all this.
5. To the Flemish government to increase the direct bilateral relations with the Basque Country.

Source: Gara[es].

European Parliament in Brussels suffers armed robbery

This is kind of funny: two robbers, one of the armed robbed a post office in the EP building in Brussels (left) while MEPs were holding a meeting just a hundred meters away. 

They only got 8000 euros (not too much for such a high risk robbery) but they managed to flee the crime scene. A previous armed robbery in the same complex obtained 60,000 euros, a much more serious prize.

British MEP Fiona Hall, who arrived just minutes after the robbery took place declared:

For an armed robbery to happen - again - inside the European parliament means that the security system here is a complete farce. 

Indeed.

Source: BBC.

Anyhow it is possible to breach into NATO headquarters, it has been done before quite easily (I know personally some who did and I saw the video - quite funny the angry generals): there's nothing impossible in this life with determination and bit of luck.