Some old music: "Nuclear yes, of course!"

Before discovering Punk, I listened to almost everything that was in the radio, which in those times was quite ample, not the boring pop monotony of today. One of the bands I enjoyed the most in my pre-Punk era was Aviador Dro, a techno-industrial Castilian band of openly Anarchist ideology, who soon launched their own records company. Apparently the song that made them so popular back in 1983 was "Nuclear sí, por supuesto!" ("Nuclear yes, of course!"), which plays with nuclear apocalypse ideas so keen to the movies and other entertainment of that period to expose the madness of the nuclear ideology. Now sounds a bit silly (and also a bit sad because it evokes the terrible reality of Chernobyl, Fukushima and other places) but back in the day it was a great success, probably because the anti-nuclear struggles and the ever present threat of overnight global destruction by nuclear armaggedon of military design were in the limelight.

Lyrics (original Spanish here):

Nuclear yes, of course!
Nuclear yes, how not!

I want to swim in radium seas
with clouds of cobalt, strontium and plutonium.
I want to have lead covers
and deformed children riding their motorcycles.
Deserted ruins with beautiful swimming pools
dried up women with vampire voices
Hungry mutants searching in the streets
fresh corpses that sate their hunger

Nuclear yes, of course!
Nuclear yes, how not!

Burning hills, scorched by the sun
and forests of lights of burned skins
Monstrous snakes gulping houses
and wide deserts covered by embers 
Roaring volcanoes spitting lava
and hot zones completely razed
Hidden caves in deep beaches
and valleys covered of winged flowers

Nuclear yes, of course!
Nuclear yes, how not!

Stevie Wonder renounces to sing for the Zionist terrorist forces

As I mentioned earlier it was most perplexing why would Wonder support Apartheid in Palestine when he had been such a strong activist against Apartheid in South Africa. But it seems that public pressure has opened his eyes (metaphorically speaking) an he won't be performing in a fund-raising show for the IDF terrorist organization in Los Angeles this week. 

Source: Jews sans frontieres.

Stevie Wonder Disgraces Himself with Concert for Israeli Military

From Black Agenda Report:

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Stevie Wonder, who once penned a song against apartheid in South Africa, will star at a fundraiser for the Israeli military, early next month. How shocking that a Black cultural icon would help throw a party for the soldiers of “a system that some describe as even worse than that practiced by the white South African regime.”

Stevie Wonder Disgraces Himself with Concert for Israeli Military

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“One of Black America’s most beloved artists has signed, sealed and delivered his vast talents in service to the murderous military of a racist, criminal regime.”

Say it ain’t so, Stevie Wonder. The music superstar is lending his name and talents to one of the most unworthy causes in the world: a salute to the Israeli Defense Forces, in Los Angeles, on December 6. Stevie Wonder will help raise millions for an Israeli war machine that is already funded by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars a year. It is a shame and a disgrace that one of Black America’s most beloved artists has signed, sealed and delivered his vast talents in service to the murderous military of a racist, criminal regime. It’s an even bigger shame that there will likely be no punishment for Stevie Wonder from his many fans, in this, the Age of Obama.

Even a generation ago, in the 1980s, Stevie Wonder could not have expected immunity from mass condemnation for helping throw a party for a racist government – for any amount of money. Back in 1985, the South African regime tried to blunt the global anti-apartheid movement by inviting American entertainers of all races to perform at Sun City, the white regime’s version of Las Vegas. Sun City was built in Bophuthatswana, a poverty-stricken black bantustan. Lots of U.S. entertainers, including some Black ones, allowed themselves to be bought off by the white regime’s deep pockets. These included Tina Turner, The O’Jays, Dionne Warwick and Ray Charles. Famously, while Blacks outside the Sun City venue loudly protested his appearance, Ray Charles ostentatiously patted his back pocket, signaling that he was all about the money.

... continue reading at BAR.

Of course: it's all about the money. Boycott Stevie, boycott Madonna, boycott Israel!

Japanese director dies in car accident after announcing critical movie on TEPCO

Koji Wakamatsu
(source)

Koji Wakamatsu was a Japanese director, maybe best known for his role as producer in the once-upon-a-time value-shattering In the Realm of the Senses, directed by Nagisha Oshima.

His own filmography was not meager and, after a long hiatus, he had been recently in several European festivals with his new movies, the latest one being about the freaky failed fascist coup by far-right intellectual Yukio Mishima.

He had declared in Venice Festival that he planned to make a movie about the all-powerful Tokyo Electric Company (TEPCO). He would never make it, being killed by a car in an alleged yet suspicious accident.

Fukushima Diary reports how Wakamatsu had previously been offered to make a movie on the nuclear industry but that he had to give up because denouncing TEPCO was absolute taboo:

They requested me not to use the term of “Tepco”. I asked them to make a scene that someone throws a sunflower to Tepco at least, but they even turned it down. so I withdrew from it.

However he was not determined to make his own movie on the matter:

Now I really want to make a film about Tepco. Nobody wants to make one, so I’ll be serious to start a fight against Tepco.

He never made it. 

Oliver Stone demands trial for Aznar, Blair and Bush

After receiving the Special 60 Anniversary Donostia Prize, US filmmaker Oliver Stone demanded that former Spanish President, José María Aznar faces war crimes trial at La Hague for the War of Iraq, together with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, for the War of Iraq, following here the lead of South African Christian leader Desmond Tutu. He also suggested that George W. Bush is not leaving the USA because he fears that international justice could be brought upon him for that reason.

He also criticized Obama and forecast yet another electoral victory of Hugo Chávez in the upcoming Venezuelan elections. 

Oliver Stone has directed such masterpieces as Salvador, Midnight Express, JFK, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers or Comandante.

Source: Aporrea[es].

Cinecittá occupied in class struggle

The semi-mythic Roman studio's workers are on strike against the new plans of Big Capital to recycle the "city of cinema" into some sort of "disneyworld". And, as part of the process, the workers are to be transferred to subcontractors, where their conditions will be much worse.

Occupied Cinecittá

 Source and more details at Struggles in Italy.

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.

Motivated!

I was reading about an armed robbery with hostages in Tolouse and my mind wandered to this great activist band from that city: Zebda, which I had not listened to in a while but has a great "partisan hymn", Motivé! (Motivated!), which was sort of a hit in the 1990s and I thought I'd share because, as they sing, one must be motivated to fight...

I just thought I'd share (with special dedication to the Québécois students):

The lyrics in French:

Ami entends tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines
Ami entends tu les cris sourds du pays qu'on enchaîne
Ohé, partisans ouvriers et paysans c'est l'alarme
Ce soir l'ennemi connaîtra le prix du sang et des larmes

Refrain

Motivés, motivés
Il faut rester motivés !
Motivés, motivés
Il faut se motiver !
Motivés, motivés
Soyons motivés !
Motivés, motivés
Motivés, motivés !

C'est nous qui brisons les barreaux des prisons pour nos frères
La haine à nos trousses et la faim qui nous pousse, la misère
Il est des pays où les gens au creux des lits font des rêves
Chantez compagnons, dans la nuit la liberté vous écoute

Refrain

Ici chacun sait ce qu'il veut, ce qu'il fait quand il passe
Ami si tu tombes un ami sort de l'ombre à ta place
Ohé, partisans ouvriers et paysans c'est l'alarme
Ce soir l'ennemi connaîtra le prix du sang et des larmes

Refrain

On va rester motivé pour le face à face
On va rester motivé quand on les aura en face
On va rester motivé, on veut que ça se sache
On va rester motivé...

Refrain

On va rester motivé pour la lutte des classes
On va rester motivé contre les dégueulasses

Motivés, motivés...

And a translation (with help of Google Translate):

Friend can you hear the black flight of ravens over our plains
Friend can you hear the muffled cries of the country that connects
Hey, supporters workers and peasants is the alert
Tonight the enemy will know the cost of blood and tears

chorus

Motivated, motivated
You have to stay motivated!
Motivated, motivated
You have to motivate!
Motivated, motivated
Be motivated!
Motivated, motivated
Motivated, motivated!

It is we who break through the prison bars for our brothers
The hatred on our heels and the hunger that drives us, the misery
There are countries where people are deep in the bed of dreams
Sing comrades, in the night freedom listens to you

chorus

Here everyone knows what he wants, what he does when he goes
Friend, if you fall, a friend emerges from the shadows in your place
Hey, partisans, workers and peasants: is the alarm
Tonight the enemy shall know the cost of blood and tears

chorus

We will keep you motivated for the face-to-face
We will keep you motivated when you'll have them in front
We will keep you motivated, we want it to be known
We will keep you motivated ...

chorus

We will keep you motivated for the class struggle
We will stay motivated against the disgusting

Motivated, motivated ...

Systemic racism in Hollywood

Cynthia McKinney denounces today at BAR how racist terminology is continuously used among the invariably white Hollywood managerial elite. But the real problem, as I see it, is not a matter of mere language, sometimes equivocal, but the racist practices that effectively work as a glass ceiling against African American managers and producers:

It is the contention of Leonard Rowe, perhaps the best-known and most successful of all Black concert promoters, that the regular use of these words by powerful Hollywood executives is a telling indicator of Hollywood's pervasively racist attitudes toward Blacks, an attitude that produced illegal trust-like business practices that essentially made Black concert promoters extinct.

How could these particular Hollywood executives do that?

According to music industry veterans, once a Black entertainer "crossed over" to a White audience, Black concert promoters were almost never allowed to promote that entertainer again. Moreover, according to Rowe, not once was a Black concert promoter allowed to promote a White entertainer. According to Rowe, this collusion to fix profits effectively denied the Black community the spin-off economy associated with concerts and concert promotions, and the multiplier effect of dollars turning over in the Black community.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers cooperating with Apartheid, please don't!

Not just a sinsorga like Madonna but many other artists who don't seem to understand that Israel is the name of Apartheid and colonialism in Palestine are whitewashing fascism. 

In this case it is Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Punks Against Apartheid has initiated a campaign to persuade them not collaborate with the Zionazis.

Christian fundamentalist intolerance: Spanish singer Krahe persecuted for a video clip

The clip, by Javier Krahe, is from 2004 and it was a silly mockery of the "death and resurrection" mythology of the Christian sect in which a Christ was prepared and cooked, left in the oven for three days, after which comes out on his own (wow miracle). 

You can watch the video, which was emitted by "Lo + plus", at El País. 

For it the Fundamentalist Christian Center for Religious Studies Thomas Moore, has brought both the singer and the program to trial. Worst is that the case has not been dismissed straightforwardly, as is common sense.

Krahe has declared that if condemned, he will exile himself to France.

Sources[es]: El País, Sare Antifaxista.

Imagination versus power in Quebec

From Kasama:

We don’t know if the following story is true. But if it isn’t, it should be:

Quebec police asked the striking students there to submit a march route. Here is what the cops received:

Gaza children's art exposition in Oakland censored by Zionist Lobby

The Children's Museum of Art, in the Californian city of Oakland, decided to suspend an exposition of art by children of the largest open air prison on Earth, Gaza Strip. The reason "pressure by Jewish groups", i.e. the Zionist Lobby hiding themselves behind an ethnic pretext. 

The art of the innocent victims of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide included pieces such as these:

Sources: Jews sans frontieres, MuzzleWatch. 

Punks Against Apartheid show the middle finger to Jello

Well, some are more polite but anyhow.

There is a campaign going on to dissuade classical punk musician Jello Biafra (former member of Dead Kennedys) from performing in Apartheid Palestine (aka Israel).

Biafra did not look your usual fascist brainless punkster like Johnny Rotten: at least he has made some political activity (run for the Green Party presidential candidature with someone of the dignity level of Mumia Abu Jamal) and coined the popular phrase Don't hate the media, become the media.

He seems to have a couple of neurones, so to say. So why is he breaking the cultural and academic boycott to Israel and traveling there in a gig? Your hunch is as good as mine.

Whatever the case, Punks Against Apartheid has initiated a campaign against this performance: they are collecting signatures HERE and asking for activists to show Jello the finger in France, Switzerland and Finland, where he is performing before going to the Zionist terrorist colonies of Israel.

Biafra has suddenly made his Facebook page private, meaning that you cannot leave comments anymore. 

Some videos telling Jello to refrain himself from showing support for Nazi Israel:

Israeli anarchist (from Anarchists Against the Wall):

Deaf filmmaker Sabina England (Artists Against Apartheid):

Remember that you can sign the Punks Against Apartheid petition.


Update (Jun 29): Eventually Biafra decided to cancel his gig in Tel Aviv but he has issued such a jerky ultra-Zionist statement that I wish he'd done what he had planned to do an let things more clear.

Read what the Electronic Intifada has to say.

My opinion is that this guy is not the compromised lefty that some people feel he is, but actually someone with no idea of what is going on and totally brainwashed by the Zionist propaganda.

He says: This does not mean I or anyone else in the band are endorsing or joining lockstep with the boycott of all things Israel. Erm, then why bother? Either you boycott Israel or yo do not but why then suspend this actuation if you don't give a dime about the boycott to Israel, i.e. to Apartheid in Palestine?

He then charges against something he calls the 'drive all the Jews into the sea' crowd. This is the oldest Zionist trick ever. They even used it against this US veteran journalist Helen Thomas! This is about ending Apartheid and foreign (Jewish) occupation of Palestine. There is no notion of "driving the Jews out to the sea", even if that may be the end result if the Apartheid, the occupation and the genocide continue. What we demand is an end to Israel, a return of the refugees, a unified Palestinian state and that, after returning all stolen property and rights, all those rooted Jews who wish to stay do so.

But first is the Palestinian People, because they, as native people, oppressed people and exterminated people, have a much greater right than the colonists from overseas. These in any non-racist concept of justice come necessarily second, after all the abuses have been repaired.

En fin: I really hate that guy, makes all Punks look bad.

Tito Kayak climbed it in 2007

A small victory: Israel to dismantle one of the most bitterly fought sectors of the Apartheid Wall. 

You may have heard of Bil'in, where weekly nonviolent protests take place demanding farmers' access to their lands. Access blockaded by the wall of shame and the happy trigger of the Zionazi soldiers that guard it.

A court ruling has now forced that sector to be dismantled. The camera tower (left) was already demolished yesterday.

Source: Anarchists Against the Wall.

The tower is down now

China Syndorme may be ongoing at Fukushima but TEPCO still in denial

Maybe some of my older readers remember that 70s movie: The China Syndrome. I'm young enough that I watched it only on TV... yet it impacted my then young mind the (wrong) idea of a nuclear device of some sort could go through the center of Earth and reappear at the other side of the World.

That's why the misleading name of China Syndrome, otherwise a very real danger of nuclear reactors: a danger of permanent contamination of underground soil and water as the melted core makes its way downwards, slowly but steadily, being impossible to control - at all, ever. 

It would seem that Fukushima is approaching or even fully in that worst case scenario: as awareness of the total dry meltdowns on at least one and probably all three reactors at Fukushima since day one has caught, several articles have appeared recently all around discussing the possibility, quite serious in my opinion, of a China Syndrome (E. Harrell at Times, M. Holland at the Herald Sun, J. Koury at The Examiner). 

Meanwhile, for TEPCO, whose behavior (as well as that of the Japanese government) is criminal towards its own people and the wider World (because radioactivity knows no borders), is still in denial and has announced continuity of the same old failed plans to bring the reactors to a full cold shutdown by January 2012 by means of pumping water and more water, that is only evaporating in the heat or spilling to the ground. 

What?!

Anything but admitting this is worse than Chernobyl. Anything but solving the problem. Anything but facing reality. Who put those useless criminals in charge?


Update: Prof. Christopher Busby of the European Commission on Radiation Risks is quite merciless and hopeless about the situation at Japan, which is, in his opinion out of control and cannot be solved. He makes an appeal to at least contain the atmospheric releases (implying Chernoby sarcophagus) and for the Japanese government to take over TEPCO with international help.

From Russia Today.


Update (May 18): triple total meltdown is official.

TEPCO acknowledges total meltdown in all three reactors (ongoing from unknown time, maybe since soon after the earthquake) and also reveals that at least part of the water leakage (that was previously acknowledged as a problem) has gone through the holes perforated by the very meltdown cores themselves at the bottom of the reactor.

Former senior nuclear researcher, Fumiya Tanabe, criticized the best case scenario approach that TEPCO has got all this time, causing, among other things unnecessary radiation exposure to workers and allowed further radiation leakage than unavoidable.

Source: Asahi.


Update (May 19): Workers getting extremely high doses of radiation.

Gernika-Palestine

You know what happens with walls, right? People go and paint on them. It's been happening since the Paleolithic.


Source: Sare Antifaxista

Art at the stock market

Not sure what feng-shui enthusiasts or Hindu astrologers will think of this (I can only recall the big trouble the bull sculpture at Mumbai stock market went through because the bull was, it seems, in the wrong position) but this piece of art at the Milan stock market is just... well you have to see it:

The sculpture is the work of Maurizio Cattelan and it is named "L.O.V.E. Happy end?". You may not have noticed at first sight but it is not really a fist with an extended middle finger but a hand with no fingers left but that one.

The artwork, described as "metaphor of contemporaneity" by the author is only located at Piazza Affari, right in front of the fascist era building of the stock market, temporarily but it has been a success and the City Hall has decided to keep the sculpture there at least until October 24, because of huge popular pressure. 

In this case at least, I'd say that the people is not wrong at all: the sculpture is just right in front of the hyper-symmetric and inexpressive neoclassic fascist facade. It expresses a lot where there was no expression and makes you think also. I would dare say that, if it remains, it may soon become a tourist destination of some importance, shadowing the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, though one has to admit that a little too strong for children (not so much for the middle finger but for the maimed ones).

Of course the statue has already a popular name that overshadows the original one: Vaffalculo, which in Italian means, naturally, fuck off.

Source: Ciudad Futura[es]