Million Iraqis demand US out

A massive demonstration said to be of a million people took Baghdad on April 9 (only found about it now, so good for the "free media") demanding the USA to get out of the state by the end of the year or face armed opposition. The demonstration seem to have been called by the pro-Iranian movement led by Moqtada el-Sadr, which represent about 1/3 of Iraqi Arabs.

(Source: Protestation.org)

It is a smart way to capitalize in the widespread discontent of Iraqis, resentful of the poverty, corruption and sectarian terror that have plagued the country since the unjustifiable US invasion of 2003. It clearly demonstrates that US (plus) policy in regard to Iraq since 1990, when former dictator Saddam Hussein was tricked by Washington into invading the nearby autocracy of Kuwait, a former Iraqi province, has been totally wrong and has favored Iran, consciously or not.

I believe that this favoring of Iran has been conscious because the USA and its main allies in the regions (Israel and Saudi Arabia) strongly favor religious fundamentalism over secular nationalism of any sort (and that's why Hussein was deceived and destroyed and Baathism forbidden). Islamic fundamentalism is a ghetto ideology that can be mostly manipulated into the perfect foe, which you can beat feeling justified and who cannot ever gain friends beyond that specific ghetto. Making fundamentalism, most of which is controlled by the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia, the main political drive in the region is a way to make sure that neither key US ally is ever threatened because Panarabism (their biggest fear, a secularist, modern, Western-like but not generally pro-Western, ideology) cannot assemble.

News: fascism in Spain and Argentina

Several news on fascism at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean:

Religious repression against atheist protesters

In what can well illustrate how non-democratic is the neo-fascist Kingdom of Spain, the atheist procession of this Easter (imposed Christian holiday) has been forbidden by the tribunals at Madrid. Not just that, the tribunals have opened actions against the organizers, it is not well known under what pretext.

Most Spaniards are today agnostic to atheist but the traditional billionaire pedophile and autocratic cult known as the Catholic Church still enjoys of state protection, very generous public funding (untouched by the cuts), extensive real state property and is considered the official religion of the otherwise "secular" state.

Source: Sare Antifaxista.

Spanish fascists' threats against Basques at football match hidden by the press

Years ago, a Basque football supporter was rounded, beaten and murdered impunely in the streets of Madrid by a death squad of well organized fascist hooligans who had been ordered by some dark hand to kill a Basque that night. The name of the victim was Aitor Zabaleta and the murder really opened an even wider abyss between Basques and Spaniards, in addition to other abuses and crimes.

Yesterday, many years later, in a rematch Athletico de Madrid - Real Sociedad de San Sebastian, the same hooligan fascist murderer gang, the Frente Atlético, was all the match crying death threats against Basques and vindicating their crime.

Spanish media, which had previously made an issue of a player being wooed for carrying political propaganda in the form of a Spanish banner armband, in a match, hid this apology of violence against Basques, not reported in any newspaper nor shown in any TV channel.

But you can judge yourself thanks to the Internet (not nice to watch but evidence in any case):

For those of you that cannot understand Spanish, they chant: "Fucking Basque who doesn't jump", "Basques we have come to stab you and we don't care about the result [of the match]". "Freedom for Ricardo Guerra" [the murderer], "That's why I am going to stab the pig of the Real [Sociedad], you don't deceive us: Aitor Zabaleta was of Jarrai" [banned Basque Youth organization, false claim: he was just a random victim]

Source[es]: Sare Antifaxista.

Argentina: death squad impunely beat striking teachers

Atilio Boron[es] provides us with this video of a beating against striking teachers in Santa Cruz, Patagonia, Argentina:

Notice that some of the attackers attempt to contain others for fear they could kill the victims.

In the original entry we are told that there is clear named leader of this attack: Carlos García, Secretary General of UOCRA, a yellow union, who appears in the video, but that the media is avoiding to point fingers.

Japan may move capital to the South

images from Tokyo

Tokyo has been the executive capital of Japan for the last four centuries, since the unification of the country by the warlords-made-shoguns based in that town, then known as Edo, in the early 17th century.  Even when the shoguns were replaced by illustrated imperial rule in the 19th century, Tokyo remained as capital. However this may be no more.

According to a Bulgarian News Agency, citing Russian ITAR-TASS, Japan is mulling to move the capital to a more southernly location as the radiation dangers increase and become impossible to deny. The most likely locations of the new capital would be Osaka or Nagoya, both near international airports but much further to the southwest and hence more protected form the dangers of Fukushima.

Other most recent news on Fukushima nuclear disaster (from Energy News)

• New burst of radioactive material emitted after cooling effort
• Sudden temperature increase in reactor no. 3
• Iodine 131 at spent fuel pool (reactor no. 4) is 22,000 times normal for this kind of pool
• Forecast of dense radiation cloud over US West coast today and tomorrow
• Radiation level in groundwater at Fukushima I grew 1000% (10 times) in just one week
• Fuel of reactors 1 and 3 confirmed to have melt down and settled at the bottom of the containment (reactor 2 was already confirmed to be in that situation and even to have perforated the containment). 

USA to install more bases in Honduras

The consolidation of US military presence in Honduras after the fascist coup of June 2009 is under  way. While the USA has formally rejected the coup in practice it has recognized  and supported it, reaping the benefits in form of, among other things, military bases. 

Already in 2010 it acquired a new imperial base near the Nicaraguan border, now it wants to install another base in the Northern coast.

Source[es]: Lista Informativa Nicaragua y más.

NATO accused of using depleted uranium bombs in Libya

There is an interesting report at Uruknet today on the more than likely use of depleted uranium

(DU) bombs by NATO forces in Libya. It includes the following RT video:

DU bombs are used because the material is cheap (nuclear energy production residue nobody wants) and has a great penetration power but it also has a half life of 4.5 billion years (radiation is forever), what makes places bombed by these weapons in Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and now also Libya, perpetually contaminated. Some specific sites as Fallujah (Iraq) are so polluted that one out of four newborns arrives with horrible mutational health problems. 

UN agencies have asked for a ban of DU weapons but big nuclear powers like the USA, UK, France and Israel oppose it.

US anti-militarist protests: imperial army is just too expensive and pointless

A couple of videos I found at Protestation.org, the first one is a short one of a demo in New York City (warning: very loud sound) against imperial wars, the second is a Russia Today report on military spending in the USA, including images of a demonstration before the White House and opinions by demonstrators and a SIPRI spokesman.

I believe that in time of spending cuts, it is a clear priority to cut first the useless military than the much needed social programs, that is particularly true if about 30% of the budget goes to an oversized and pointless military, unable to win a single peace (winning peace is usually much more difficult than winning wars and requires other means for which an army, specially an occupation army, may be an obstacle). 

In any case, can anyone tell me what's the point of keeping Iraq, Haiti and Afghanistan occupied? Sure, I know that a point can always be made but, seriously... are Afghan poppy fields such a major geostrategical interest for the USA? I do not think so. 

And, even assuming that they are, what does the common US citizen get from that? Wouldn't they be happier with a 30% tax return for example, or with keeping the social programs going?

Source: link 1, link 2.

Development bank stops financing to Hoduran murderer businessman

Stop murders in Aguán

I have mentioned on occasion the struggle of the peasants of Bajo Aguán, which has become emblematic in the fight against dictatorship and feudal capitalism in Honduras. Much more than what I have reflected comes to light every other day in Spanish language in alternative media such as Lista Informativa Nicaragua y más.

Today some good news for a change: Miguel Facussé (Dinant Corporation), visible head of landowners of Bajo Aguán has seen financing by the German Bank for Development (Deutsche Entwicklungsgesellschaft) canceled after his role in the massacres became known.

There is anyhow an ongoing campaign to the British government demanding that it retrieves authorization for another loan of a so-called "clean development mechanism"  project for this feudal terrorist's oil palm plantations in Bajo Aguán. 

This case highlights how supposedly development and ecological funds are being used to strengthen dictatorships and class oppression - and later the imperialist banks will have no shame in demanding the people to pay for such loans that only harm the interest of the Honduran people.  

Two small countries and their struggles for freedom

Probably when you think of Bahrain you do not thing of Swaziland... or vice versa. Me neither, admittedly. But I just stumbled on them almost together and almost for the same reasons when browsing the news. And they have at least some stuff in common it seems: absolute monarchs put in place by Britain in the colonial period, as well as popular uprisings against them.

Hunger strike in Bahrain

Bahrain, a small oil-rich island state, has become the epicenter of the Arab Revolution in the Persian Gulf. The popular uprising, which seemed about to succeed, deposing one of those stupid absolute monarchies, vassal totalitarian principalities, promoted by Anglosaxon imperialism, was quelled by means of Saudi intervention, sparking a wave of arrests and repression to this day, including some killings.

Yesterday, Zainab Al-Khawaja, the daughter of one of the human rights' activists arrested under the Saudi invasion, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja (left), has declared herself in hunger strike, demanding his release and that of other relatives. 

This courageous action has at least the potential of extending the revolutionary pulse of Bahraini society into the immediate future, beyond a repression which has probably got one of every thousand Baharainis in jail by now. 

However the real challenge for the revolution to continue in the area is to extend itself into the hyper-totalitarian theocracy of the Ibn Sauds, where fear seems to dominate at all levels. Once Saudi Arabia falls, the rest are sure to follow suit easily. 

Swazi urprising

Far away into Southern Africa, there is another of those Anglosaxon-created totalitarian monarchies, it is called Swaziland and is no Disneyland: while 70% of the denizens live in abject poverty (< $1.00 per day) the autocrat Mswati III ranks among the wealthiest princes of Earth with a fortune of $100 million, has a harem of 13 wives, and rules without concessions to parliamentarism or any sort of modernity. 

Placed between Johannesburg, Maputo and Durban, some of the most thriving metropolis of Africa, such a totalitarian anachronism could not survive for long, even if rural and "independent".

Hence thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital, Mbabane, called by the teachers' union in the 38th anniversary of the coup that suppressed any form of popular representation (1973). The demonstrations have been repressed by police, which has performed many arrests, including seven unionists and one journalist.

Japan authorities incompetent (South Korea) - cautionary measures recommended in Europe

As a new major earthquake (7.1) hit today deep into Fukushima prefecture worries about the future of the nuclear catastrophe in North Japan and the rest of World grow.

The Japanese management (or lack of it) of the Fukushima I nuclear catastrophe is getting the world angry. After all, this is not a problem affecting just Japan anymore: the radioactive plume has been going around the World, specially onto North America (which has received the most sustained air pollution, after the North Pacific Ocean, because of dominant winds) but also on occasion to South Korea and its surrounding seas (in much greater concentrations because of shorter distance). In addition, radioactive water is being released or just leaking without control to the Ocean, what will have no doubt a major environmental effect itself. 

While Japanese officials seem unable to decide a course to follow next, South Korean officials, feeling threatened in their own soil and waters, have begun to openly criticize the Japanese inability to manage the crisis. Of course, it is not easy to manage, but in any other country TEPCO would be by now intervened by the state (either civil protection or the military) and its CEOs fired. Similarly the complacient Minister of Industry, if not the whole government, would have been fired by now as well. Instead the Japanese state follows as if nothing would have happened, putting millions of lives at risk for that reason. 

When they should have evacuated all children and pregnant women from half of Japan and applied a general evacuation zone since the beginning of at least 80 km radius, Tokyo has just now extended the evacuation to 30 km., what is a shame, because this delay of several weeks will have caused deaths and much suffering in the mid term in the towns of this area. Radiation kills, that we cannot see it does not mean it is harmless.


French agency recommends careful diet

Meanwhile, here in Europe, the French research body on radioactivity CRIIRAD has declared that Fukushima radiation risk is no longer negligible and asks specially for children and pregnant/lactating women to avoid as much as possible the following risky behaviors (PDF in French):

• Drinking rainwater
• Eating large-leaved vegetables
• Drinking fresh milk 
• Eating creamy cheese (specially from goat or sheep)
• Meat (except those animals already in stable)

These foods should not be the base of the regular diet from now on, specially for the categories mentioned, as children are much more at risk than adults. These recommendations apply to other parts of Europe as well.

A map of the French state shows that the highest concentrations of iodine-137 in rain have been in the SW. This is of particular concern to me as I live in that part of Europe and, if Bordeaux and the Central Pyrenees are getting dangerous levels, Bilbao is surely getting them too.

They warn about tap water as well wherever this one comes from reservoirs.


In Hawaii, radioactive cesium and iodine isotopes in milk has been detected to be 600% above maximum allowed.

I follow most Fukushima catastrophe news from Energy News.



Updates: Fukushima I officially equivalent to Chernobyl (or worse): a level 7 nuclear disaster. 

After latest earthquake all three Fukushima I reactors lost power (no info on Fukushima II or other plants).

Vietnam has found uranium-238 in pine needles after radioactive cloud said to have reached the country in April 9. (I'd say it is not too plausible to be from Fukushima and it is more likely instead to be an undetected remnant of nuclear tests in the Pacific, China or even the WWII nuclear bombings of Japan by the USA - radiation is forever).


Update Apr 12: Fire at reactor no. 4's ultra-radioactive spent fuel pool. Army not sure if extinguished.

Update (Apr 13):

Damage to highly radioactive spent fuel in reactor no. 4 (pictured above burning) confirmed after fire. The authorities hope that most of the fuel rods are in "sound condition" but at this stage it's clear that the authorities in charge are daydreaming and wishful thinking rather than properly assessing the damage. This inoperative fuel pool contains enormous amounts of plutonium and depleted uranium, and the pool where the fuel should be submerged has a massive crack to its side, so filling it with water is not a possibility. 

An additional problem caused by crisis management itself is the formation of a massive "lake" in Fukushima with some 70 million liters of highly radioactive water. This water has been used to try to keep the fuel rods as cool as possible after normal cooling circuits failed because of the earthquake and tsunami. It is not really clear what will be done with all this ultra-toxic water.

Barcelona votes massively on Catalonia's independence

Nothing less than 21.37% of the citizens of Barcelona took part yesterday in a non-official referendum on the independence of Catalonia. This is a very high figure considering that the vote is not official and has no legal value: it means that a lot of people thinks important to support at least the right to decide of the Catalan nation. 

Percentages of support for each option are not yet known but we can easily assume that, as opponents of independence (except a handful of fascist provocateurs who showed up with banners opposing independence and eventually voted anyhow), will typically shun the event, victory for the independentist option is almost guaranteed. 

Sources[es]: Gara, Sare Antifaxista.

Iceland sets up example: citizens must not pay banks' debts

Icelanders have rejected again in referendum the colonialist blackmail by the UK and the Netherlands to make the citizens of the Nordic island to pay the debts of a private bank with public money.

The attitude of the Icelander People is just common sense: who dares to even conceive that the public should pay for the failures of privately owned companies?!

Still the imperialist governments of London and Amsterdam are trying to make Iceland, the citizens, get indebted for 30 or 40 years (at least) in order to pay these private liabilities. They threaten to bring the issue to the EFTA Court (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are members of EFTA, nowadays a satellite of EU) in the hope of being able to force by means of international arbitration this abuse.

I understand that Iceland (and any other country pushed to a similar situation, like Ireland) should stand firm and never ever accept the absurd and abusive idea that the liabilities of private business must be assumed by the public in any way.


Update: Michael Hudson agreed with me (three days ago).

Toronto: Thousands protest against privatization of public services

Not sure of the exact context but it is clear that a lot of people mobilized to defend local social gains of the last many decades against attempts to sell them to the sharks, with all the consequences that means. Video from Protestation.org:

Rotten to the marrow... and still winning elections

IMAGE REMOVED BECAUSE OF NATO CENSORSHIP AGAINST INSURGENTE WEBSITE

Corrupt Tory politicians laughing at everyone

Something good about having many cousins is that, in the occasional family meal such as weddings, they provide you with anecdotes from exotic places and occupations. So I have this cousin who is a propagandist mercenary (writes propaganda articles under assumed identities for a price), that other one who is a broker (unscathed in the financial crisis, don't ask me how) and that one who works in the Valencian Country much to his own desperation. 

Valencia, aka Madrid's beach, is a very strange place. 24 years ago I was hitchhiking through the peninsula and between Madrid and Valencia (and further southwards to Denia) almost all I got were reluctant rides of people who wanted to hire me for sex or even give me a job working as prostitute. They even protested that, if I was hitchhiking I must be offering my sexual services. Astonishing and disturbing. It never happened to me in any other country.

Later the road between Madrid and Valencia became known as the route of cod (bacalao, Spanish word for repetitive disco-techno music) and it became full of young brainless zombies in sportswear and extasis pills.

According to my cousin (he has repeated that in several occasions along the years), Valencia is a moral desert. Of course there are exceptions, far from me to judge any whole country much less knowing also in person some of such exceptions (for example the people around the historical hardcore band Maniática, who also made the best clone of The Clash in Spanish language ever: La Furia)... but they are from a peripheral town in the South.

The case is that the ruling conservative party (PP) of the Autonomous Community of Valencia is rotten to the marrow and most of its leaders are implicated in serious corruption scandals. Even their own party's state-wide leadership demanded from them to present a clean list to the upcoming elections, yet they have rejected to do that and at least 10 of the accused in the corruption scandals are in the list for the upcoming regional elections (not to mention what may be at municipal level).

But all polls suggest that, regardless, they are going to win by a lot. It is not only that all other parties are also quite rotten (even if maybe less exposed) but that voters do not seem to care at all. (Source: Insurgente [LINK REMOVED BECAUSE OF NATO CENSORSHIP AGAINST INSURGENTE PRETENDING 'MALWARE']).

And this last is the really worrisome part of the problem. If the electorate is not outraged by corruption, it means that they are also corrupt or at least too benevolent towards corruption. And, if that is the case, there is no way to solve corruption. 

But one thing is clear: I do not want to be in the same polity as those people. I would not want to be in the same planet in fact, because from such attitudes happen the Fukushimas and Deepwater Horizons and other catastrophes that damage us all.

Revolution scenes return to Cairo - and other Arab news

Yesterday, Tahrir Square (Cairo, Egypt) was like this:

Later by the night the Army intervened in force with clear sound of live ammunition for a long time:

No casualties are know at the moment.

The protest had been called by Egyptian youth leaders, according to Al Jazeera. More precisely members of the April 6th Youth Movement and the Social Democratic Party (which supports El Baradei), who fear that the reforms promoted by the Junta are too coy.

Many more videos of yesterday's and today's protests at Tahrir Square at Kikhote (YouTube user).

[Update (apr 10): At least one person was killed an 71 injured by the military repression (BBC). Protests continue for the third day. The Islamists have rejected the demonstrators, calling them "zealots" (how ironic!) The Junta conceded in removing some provincial governors, one of the demands, apparently - but a civilian council to replace the military one is also demanded (AJE)].

Protests and killings continue in Syria

The bloodbath heralded by El Assad in his attempt to retain power beyond this point of no return continues. At least 27 people were murdered yesterday by state forces. 

Protests continue throughout the state: in Daraa, Latakia, Tartus, Homs, Edlib... and even suburbs of Damascus (Harasta). Their demands: an end to the perpetual state of emergency, freedom of speech, free elections, the end of tyranny.

Update (Apr 14): public confessions by alleged murderers in Syrian TV blame massacres on the Muslim Brotherhood and a Lebanese MP (AJE).

Jewish Apartheid forces attack concentration camp in Palestine

The situation in nearby Palestine remains complex and heavily militarized. After a pro-democracy group attacked a bus with children of the privileged Jewish colonial ethnicity, the forces of Racist Palestine (aka Israel) attacked the concentration camp of Gaza where many of the natives have been deported in the last decades.

At the moment it seems that retaliation by the Racist Colonialist State has been limited to activist targets, to members of the Resistance, however that is not how a state is supposed to behave: they should have been arrested and gone through fair trial. Assassination is not a legitimate tool by any state, much less when they have all the power to act otherwise. 

Yemen murders citizens in Taiz and Hudaida

Sale o no sale? (Spanish for does he get out of does he not?), was I joking with some Arab neighbors at the kebab yesterday, playing with the surname of Yemeni dictator Saleh as we watched the images of the Yemeni demonstrations at Al Jazeera Arabic, which is always on these months, with images of the ongoing revolts and repression.

It seems he does not get out... yet. What means longer suffering for the Yemeni people. Last has been the murder of 21 citizens in Taiz, the second city of Yemen, and the port of Hudaida. Other 100 people were injured by live fire and maybe a thousand by tear gas ihalation.

Libyan rebels' love for grappa

Trying to understand the Libyan rebel camp, today Basque newspaper Gara includes a lively field report on them (in Spanish). The impression I get is that they have quite bourgeois shallow ideals of freedom and do not go beyond that. They are not tribal (not anymore), not islamist and they are definitively not socialist.

They joke a bit about this last: this one is a cousin of Osama but then they go serious and reckon: if most of us smoke hashish and drink grappa (Italian white liquor), how are we going to be Al Qaeda militants? 

They do not seem to have much of an organization or even a project (liberal democracy seems to be their goal, but there are not even political parties yet) but they seem determined to get rid of Gaddafi.

All three Fukushima I reactors are probably in advanced meltdown

This is essentially what a spokesman from the US Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)  has confessed to The New York Times on condition of anonymity. It is a practical certainty for reactor no. 2 and it is very likely for reactors no. 1 and 3.

According to this source, the extremely high radiation detected several days ago in the water poured in the drywell clearly indicates that the melted core has breached the reactor encasement. 

It is noticeable that some of the radiation measures in reactors 1 and 3 are very similar, so there are all reasons to believe that we are before three Chernobyls in one (not counting the equally dangerous spent fuel stored in empty pools, which has also reached criticality and is in any case extremely radioactive without need of any further complications).

It is possible that not all three melted cores have fully breached the reactor containers but any breach can only get bigger because of radioactive erosion. 

This multiple Chernobyl, as mentioned several times before, has the additional problem of being right beside the Ocean, what makes almost impossible to contain the radioactivity, as it will almost unavoidably leak to the sea via the ground, much less with any prospect of stability, as the area is a demonstrated earthquake nightmare, where any human construction is bound to collapse sooner or later.

My understanding is therefore that the situation is as bad as it can be. I cannot think of any viable solution. Even encasing all six reactors looks only like a mere bandage with no guarantee of results in either the short nor the long run.


Update (Apr 9): very worrisome sudden temperature and radiation rise after Thursday's earthquake. Both measures have skyrocketed in reactor no. 1. (ENews)

Socrates sells Portugal to Brussels

Lucky us we still have Portugal (1984)

The acting Prime Minister of Portugal, José Socrates Carvalho, in spite of being interim has decided to sell Portugal to the banskter mafias of Brussels in what seems a similar consummated facts' kind of treason to the one performed by Brian Cowen in Ireland.

In my opinion this is a crime against the Portuguese People. Having seen his draconian austerity measures rejected by Parliament just a few weeks ago, he now pretends to implement them by means of submission to the IMF and Brussels. Because the "rescue" (stab, stab!) comes with many strings attached. 

He should better declare bankruptcy if so bad are the public accounts and let the creditors feel the pain, rather than the public. If he still has to make cuts, the unnecessary expenditures such as the military, politicians' salaries, police forces, should be scrapped before fundamental social services like pensions, unemployment benefits, firefighters, hospitals, education and such. In addition, corporate taxes should be raised, including import taxes where possible. 

Only after implementing all these measures, they should consider freezing public salaries or other anti-social measures. And in no case they should consider accepting IMF patronage because that equals to suicide. 

IF Carvalho ("Sócrates") gets away with his scheme to sell Portugal to the international bankster mafia, then the Portuguese People should declare such agreements void.

Portugal and the Netherlands are the only two European nations who managed to successfully break off with Castilian (Spanish) imperialism. For that reason I have then in particularly high esteem (even though their own ruthless imperialist policies taint such a noble history). 

In any case, beware because they are selling off the nation to the international bankster mafia now, what will have, unless the People raises and stops this new colonialist scheme,  terrible consequences for the near future. 

What is really going on?

Let's look at things upfront: what is going on with this enslaving-by-debt scheme?

What is happening is an internal European colonialist adventure using financial and bureaucratic structures instead of (by the moment) military forces. Iceland barely escaped this scam but the rulers of Greece, Ireland and Portugal have shown themselves to be much more complacent with their imperial masters in Brussels (actually in Berlin, London, Paris, Amsterdam...)

Everybody knows that IMF policies are useless (except to cause more poverty and grant, sometimes, repayment of the induced debt to the last drop of blood). I am positive that not even IMF officers believe in them in any way other than for what they are: imperialist tools to keep peripheral states under a neocolonial yoke. 

Would they be half-serious about deficit, they'd be raising taxes, scrapping WTO agreements (that do not benefit European workers nor budgets the least) and allowing governments to print more euros (which would have the added benefit of devaluing the euro, so European companies would export more and import less). They would be cutting politicians' salaries (heard of that anywhere?), subsidies to the Church, payments to parasitic monarchs... but nope: instead of cutting subsidies to private (Catholic mostly) schools, they are cutting pensions! 

What the heck! So the ailing Catholic Church can keep their undue public funding but the pensions that workers have already paid for (yes, this is no charity: workers pay for their pensions in advance, it's just a public insurance) are being axed? 

This has no other name than robbing the poor to give to the rich. Institutionally so.

And internationally it intends to put the peoples of so many states, possibly all EU eventually,  in a colonial status through perpetual indentured service (slavery through debt). 

Beware and raise up against this abuse!

Korrika 2011 (running for Basque language)

This is a tradition of decades in the Basque Country: the bi-yearly Korrika (lit. "running"), which is both a demonstration in favor of Basque language (and a zillion accessory initiatives) and a fund-rising effort for the Coordination of Basque language Alphabetization (AEK) the largest and best established nation-wide association of adult teaching Basque language academies. 

Korrika runs through the country in zig-zag fashion and each kilometer (or several) may be purchased by non-profit associations or individuals who sponsor that stretch of the non-competitive race and may then use it to air their own grievances. Naturally urban kilometers are expensive and open road ones extremely cheap (demand dictates). Regardless people can join the Korrika at any point at leave at any other. Nobody wins: it's just about jogging together for a good cause. 

Parallel activities such as lottery and stuff sales, concerts and others also serve to raise funding for AEK while Korrika is going on. However the most important thing is probably how nearly everybody likes to converge even if for a few minutes around this so important national and cultural event. Hardly any other event is so universally appealing.

This year's start at Trebiñu (Treviño, originally Uda) wants to make an important point. This locality was punished for resisting until the end to the Castilian conquest in 1200 and given as feudal land to an earl (hence the term Condado de Treviño) instead of being granted ample self-rule, as happened to the rest Western Navarre (today's Basque Autonomous Community). Trebiñu is still today part of Castile-León against the will of their inhabitants who have repeatedly demanded to become part of Araba and the autonomous region of the Basque Country.

It is almost incredible how wounds opened 811 years ago are still open... but they are.

You can watch a video of the first journey of this year's Korrika at Gara, for example.

Youth without Future (Spanish youths take to the streets)

Copying the Portuguese model of informal organization outside of the old and bought institutional Left, Spanish youths are taking to the streets this evening under the slogan:

Youth without Future - without home... job... pension... fear

The demo as you can see is today at 7pm in Madrid. It seems to me a little bit too fast (the calling seems to have just a few days) but hopefully it will break a trend in Spanish politics: passivity and resignation.

More info (in Spanish) at Juventud SIN Futuro.

Also their video:

Update (Apr 8):

I cannot gather much information on what happened yesterday in Madrid. At least Sare Antifaxista has finally published an information indicating that:

The demo as such happened without further incidents (no figures are provided).

Between 21:00 and 22:00 some 200 people cut traffic between Paseo del Prado and Alcalá street. Anti-riot police intervened against them then, arresting 13 and injuring at least one. 

Sequence of a treacherous aggression against a demonstrator by a policeman

Is the Arab Revolution becoming a counter-revolution?

To the many doubts about the revolutionary legitimacy of the Lybian rebel camp (now directed by a former Gaddafi's interior minister, responsible of repression himself, and tainted by the support of NATO) many other dark clouds threaten the hopefulness of the still ongoing Arab (plus) Revolution. 

Most importantly the secularist spirit so clear in the Tunisian and even in the Egyptian chapters of this revolutionary movement seems sometimes diluted. When watching videos in some countries you often hear the Islamist war cry of God is Great*... too often. You also see more and more women fully clad in niqabs, a clear sign of fundamentalist patriarchal oppression (though at least you do see them taking an active role).

In some states like Jordan, nearly all the protests have gone by the hand of the fundamentalists, truly destroying any revolutionary legitimacy to the movement. However in most places (Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and even the weak (Saudi-)Arabian, Moroccan and Iraqi movements) secularism seems to be a clear part of the discourse all or most of the time. 

The new face of the Arab Revolution? Hope not.

But beware because the establishment is clearly trying to manipulate this uprising into an "islamist" movement. An example is the reaction of Syrian dictator Hafed el-Assad to the ongoing protests: he has promulgated "concessions" like allowing teachers to wear the niqab. Concessions to whom? Clearly to the most fanatic right-wing elements in order to rally them behind his shattered regime.

On the positive side he's making lesser concession to Kurds - yet short of granting any form of self-rule.

Worrisome is also that Saudi Arabia, the worst dictatorship on Earth by far, is meddling in Yemen with a pretense of mediation (right after smashing the Bahraini revolution). Surely the Saudi mafia, with all the blessings from Washington and Tel Aviv, is trying to make sure that the result of the Yemeni Revolution is a pro-Saudi dictatorship. 

Blogger arrested by the Egyptian Junta

This last is what seems to be happening in Egypt, the heart of the Arab Revolution (if any), where the Army is persecuting people for freedom of speech now that they hope to stay in power (more or less) as the right wing parties tolerated by Mubarak seem strong enough to cope the new parliament and redirect the revolution in a backward direction.

Of course, all these developments are far from what the Arab peoples want, as it would be more of the same thing: the same old dogs with different collars. That is not why they have gone to the streets and died, so this outcome is obviously not going to be satisfactory enough. 

Watching with concern but also still with much hope.

____________

* ...but the Jungle is even greater, said the native Amazonian wisely.

Ontario cops and their oversized reactions

Interesting video-documentary I just spotted at Protestation.org on people demonstrating against police brutality in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) after a police sniper was found to have been part of a preventive anti-riot deployment.

Ontario Police's stupidity briefly hit the news last year when they were exposed for causing the riots themselves as undercover agents during a G20 meeting, even burning cars when pretending to be part of a supposed black block of riot-making youths from nowhere (the old Mano Negra scare reenacted). Oddly enough Quebec police forces had been exposed in a similar way three years earlier.

The protest was organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty but more than the protest itself, which gathered several hundred people, what is interesting is to see the counter-protest measures which are totally disproportional (cops everywhere). The discourses of the speakers are also very educative, as is some background information provided, specially regarding how it seems impossible to police the police (who guards the guardian?). 

The uploader at YouTube (TheSecretStore) also included a host of links which are surely of interest to whoever wants to deepen in this matter.

Problems accumulate at Fukushima - no end in sight

Plutonium scattered around the plant by the explosions, tons of radioactive water sitting on buildings whose structural integrity is unclear, spent fuel pools destroyed or with their cooling systems severely damaged, radioactive water leaking to the Sea or vaporizing into the atmosphere, impossibility of totally suppressing dangerous hydrogen generation near the fuel rods, at least one reactor without water at all... these are the outlines of a US Department of Energy document, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile Energy News calls our attention to the suspicious circumstance of a radiation measuring unit that detected a sudden increase of three to ten times the usual radiation (very high in any case, as it's a Manhattan Project site) and then went inoperative (disconnected obviously). The site is Richland, Washington state (USA), which is near the Hanford Site. It is not clear why the sudden increase in radioactivity in that area but a commenter suggested that it's common in the nuclear industry to use accidents as cover up circumstances to release their junk to the environment. The date of that spike is roughly when trace amounts of radioactive iodine was found in tap water of nearby Boise, Idaho (and also of Richland itself).

Follows video of anti-nuclear protests in Italy, Germany and Japan (from Protestation.org):

Update (from Washington's Blog): US congressman Edward Markey confirmed today that reactor no. 2 is in full meltdown and has penetrated the core vessel into the soil (just as in Chernobyl). This information he attributes to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), however this one denies it (or rather performs the "we are not sure" ritual dance of denial). 

There has been previous such evidence from meltdown: 

• On March 31, several incidents (neutron beams) spoke criticality (meltdown) while radiation levels became extreme. Reactor no. 1 was blamed. 
• On March 16, it was known that the meltdown core of reactor no. 2 had penetrated the ground (so this confirmation is actually "old news" from 21 days ago).
• On March 14, official fears of meltdown in three reactors were aired.
• As early of March 13, just a few days after the tsunami, partial meltdowns were officially acknowledged in reactors no. 1 and no. 3 (the two that exploded)

Besides the fear of meltdowns in reactors 1, 2 and 3, danger also looms from the spent fuel at all the six reactors. Spent fuel (nuclear residues) is in fact much more radioactive than unused fuel and has always been one of the main concerns around the nuclear hell industry because nobody knows what to do with it other than dumping it in more or less hazardous forms (weapons, nuclear waste cemeteries) or keeping it indefinitely under intensive care in pools, as the Japanese did. When the intensive care unit collapsed, problems, big killing problems, began.


Update (Apr 7) :

• Creep rupture at reactor no. 2 (meltdown reaching the floor's concrete what can cause a new hydrogen explosion, what explains the hurry to inject nitrogen) - NYT.
• Prof. Akira Hiroshi changes his mind: meltdown is  indeed going on (iodine-131 keeps growing even if its half life is only of 8 days, chlorine-38 in water is also unmistakable sign of criticality) - ENews.
• Plutonium was scattered several miles around the plant (and other video-insights by A. Gunderssen) - Fairewinds Associates.

Update (Apr 7-8 night):

South Koreans scared by radioactive wind sweeping right now clockwise through the region. Also sweeping most of Japan but not Taiwan, North Korea nor Russia (in China it  touches Shanghai Bay) - Washington's Blog.

Also from Washington's Blog, news of a very strong aftershock (7.4) that has caused the damaged plant of Onagawa (Sendai prefecture, just North of Fukushima) to lose power but apparently all emergency stops worked properly.

Economic fallacies: 'Eurosclerosis'

Is this Eurosclerosis?

Jumping around through the net I just stumbled upon what looked a pretty and forgotten jewel of vocabulary: Eurosclerosis. It has a Wikipedia entry (half-referenced) and what not! 

I was briefly seduced by the potential illustrative meanings of this word: it would of course mean a hybrid of Jacques Delors, Silvio Berlusconi and Angela Merkel, a morph of all the old people living on EU salaries just to spit on Europeans and lick banksters' boots. Surely someone looked at the unpopular Commissioners babbling before the grey and pointless Parliament and caught by a hellish (but way too real) vision of Margaret Thatcher having tea with Pinochet conceived such a horrific but descriptive concept: Eurosclerosis.

Too good? Maybe it was something more prosaic and just meant the tendency to have a thicker layer of old people, or an increasing waistline, following the US fashion?

Nope it is an idea from liberal (pro-market, anti-state) economists describing an economic problem: why Europe (or some states in Europe) experienced nominal (GDP) economic growth while not reducing unemployment. According to an unreferenced (but plausible) ideological remark at the end of the wiki-article:

The term was originally coined by German economist Herbert Giersch to describe how overregulation and a generous welfare state will undermine efficiency and job creation.^{[citation needed]}

Hold on! 

The perfect example of Eurosclerosis would be Spain, where nearly no welfare (other than pensions, extremely brief unemployment benefits and general healthcare) exist, where salaries are very low (in comparison with, say, Germany, France, the UK or Italy) and where labor rights were destroyed in the 1980s (by the so-called Socialdemocrats, mind you) up to a point that, in practical terms, total deregulation in relation to labor exists now. 

Spain is an almost totally deregulated market yet unemployment is over 20% and used to be very high even before the latest crisis, always about double than elsewhere in Europe in spite of having a less regulated labor market and much worse welfare. 

So Spain is the perfect example of Eurosclerosis but it does not respond to the liberal analysis of that Giersch guy. Would it be that deregulation in the job market alone would (magic, whoa!) create jobs, Spain would have no or almost no unemployment. The opposite is true. In fact Spain has a very weak economy in spite of a very high growth of GDP precisely because it lacks a solid welfare state. 

Regardless of the benefits for workers and social stability. Well understood welfare, for instance oriented to guarantee cheap basics (housing, healthcare, education, electricity, water, sanitation, low-times economic parachutes) for all, reduces costs country-wide. Workers need less money, so they can also work for less, becoming more competitive. 

Another way of increasing competitiveness (also applied by the alleged success story of Europe: Germany) is to specialize in more expensive products, typically more technologically rich or of higher quality). This requires investment in R+D and a non-corrupt environment that offers quality and seriousness guarantees. While for example there is some investment on that in the Basque Country or Catalonia, Spain as such mostly passes of that stuff (it's sociological, I believe). 

But still that does not explain the massive lack of jobs. The only thing that explains Spain's Eurosclerosis is that liberalism, free market, does not work: that it is a lie. No matter how much you dump your work's price, there are no jobs.

It's not just Spain: it's worse in North Africa, where unemployment reaches 40%, plus all the youths who have been forced to emigrate, risking their lives, to Europe and elsewhere. These are cheap-labor countries, typically with all the business-friendly policies you can imagine, even corruption is not that high considering how poor they are and how autocratic are their governments.

So it has only one explanation free market is a lie. 

And this brings to only two possible proactive conclusions:

Under Capitalist ("free market" lie) conditions:

1. Restore welfare, make sure that the cost of life is low, so people do not need so much money just to live that they cannot work for less. 
2. Very specially make sure that your people's needs do not become a market for foreign "investors" (bloodsucking speculators that take all and leave nothing) but that they produce what others need. Import little, export much - at least as much as you import. 
3. Tax as needed: if you are a net importer, global markets are not your friend. 

If you can escape Capitalist conditions, do it. Some free market (where a very high number of dynamic independent actors can be guaranteed) may be useful locally but oligopolistic "markets" are no markets at all and must be avoided. Better a "bad" state monopoly than a truly much worse private oligopoly (or often monopoly as well). Private monopolies are no better than public ones, they are typically much worse. 

Tenants' movement activist murdered in Poland

Protest held in Jola's memory

It happened a month ago but this is the kind of news that does not make first pages, not even Warsaw, where the authorities, clearly colluding with the criminals, are trying to hide it under the pretext of "suicide". Nobody suicides by completely burning herself in a hidden forest, so we must declare the authorities in Warsaw accomplices of this crime, just out of common sense, the same that they are accomplices of the privatization without notice or protection of any sort of the homes under dispute. 

Jolanta Brzeska, 64, was identified as the body, burnt beyond recognition, found in a forest in the outskirts of Warsaw early in March. She was a leading activist in the association of tenants who are trying to defend the rights acquired when Poland was still a socialist state against the speculative privatization of their homes. 

She was particularly confronted with one of the most infamous slumlords, Marek Mossokowski, and was the last tenant refusing to leave what was a valuable piece of real state... but also her home. An apartment that was public property until 2006. 

Sources: Polish Union of Syndicalists (ZSP)[en], CNT newspaper (print edition)[es]

Thousands march through Madrid demanding labor rights

More than 4000 people called by Basque, Galician, Catalan and Canarian national worker unions have rallied in Madrid demanding labor rights. The march was opened by a unitary trilingual banner which read:

• In Basque: Let us decide life and work conditions in our country
• In Galician: No to pensions and collective bargaining reform
• In Catalan: Right to decide our working conditions

Cries (in various languages) included stuff like: independence!; there's no lack of money but excess of robbers; Comisiones-UGT: unions of the establishment; no, no no, no to the reform; the struggle is the only way; PP-PSOE: the same shit is; etc.

The march, animated by Galician bagpipers, was welcomed at the gates of the Ministry of Work by the Basque percussion of a txalaparta. There speakers from two Basque (ELA, LAB) and one Galician (CIG) union took turns to speak, essentially rejecting the ongoing reform that makes firing workers even easier and cheaper, consolidates job precariousness and modifies the correlation of forces in favor of the patrons' cartel while weakening the working class. They also criticized the role of the institutional unions, CC.OO. and UGT, which have signed such ignominious pacts without even attempting to resist at all.

Sources: Gara, Sare Antifaxista.

Thousands demand the right to run for elections

This country is not a democracy: major political forces are banned from running on arbitrary ad-hoc regulations. Recently the Basque Nationalist Left made a huge effort to adapt to the demands of such Spanish laws and jurisprudence but nothing seems to make any difference: the Spanish Supreme Court declared the new political party illegal as well (9-7 votes, very harsh criticisms from the 7 judges who voted in favor of legalization). 

In protest for such a decision yesterday thousands took to the streets in Bilbao:

Normalization for the Basque Country - Legalization Now!

Meanwhile we continue to suffer the lack of democracy in all our institutions, all of them with extremely deep democratic roots, now denied by the Spanish fascist imposition. This awful situation has been going on for  some ten years already.

Source: Gara[es/eu]

The US-Saudi pact against the Arab Revolution

Powers are obviously trying to manipulate the Arab (plus) Revolution. They have one main goal: reduce its impact, keep the status quo as much as possible.

Exceptions? When a dictator may be a nuisance, like Gaddafi. In such cases, supporting the rebels is at least an option. 

According to Pepe Escobar (at Asia Times Online), citing two unnamed diplomats, the USA and Saudi Arabia agreed to the following: the Saudis quelled the rebellion in Bahrain and the USA (and allies) removed Moamar al Gaddafi, deeply hated by the House of Saud.

Escobar argues that NATO is now allowing Gaddafi to counter-attack, in what it seems a way of pressuring the provisional government of Benghazi to make all kind of concessions, to bow to the Empire as a vassal. The recent "accidental" attack against rebel forces by NATO may also be part of this ambiguous strategy.

Fukushima update: worst scenarios seem confirmed

Chief nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen explains that what is so wrong about the latest Fukushima I (reactor no. 4) images: there is no water and all the water being sprayed just evaporates in contact with something that is surely hyper-hot fissioning material.

The same person has several other videos discussing Fukushima catastrophe, which can be found at the Fairewinds Associates Vimeo page. 

Other important Fukushima related news from Energy News since last update:

• Fukushima I has at least 20 times the radioactive inventory of Chernobyl - Ongoing massive release of radioactivity and not over by a long shot.
• Groundwater contamination 10,000 times the legal limit at Fukushima I.
• Japan crews facing 100 years battle at Fukushima.
• Blue flash indicates localized criticality - bad news 
• Fukushima is much bigger than Chernobyl - Will cost much more in human terms.

Add to that some news on concern on the nuclear plume going over Canada and the USA.

I am particularly concerned by the (quite predictable) groundwater contamination. While it is indeed not likely that it will reach drinking water sources directly, it will no doubt reach the sea, where it will constitute a persistent focus of atmospheric and oceanic contamination impossible to contain.


Update (Apr 2): I'm too sick to bother (some nasty virus) and hence I'll take the less effort approach: linking to new informations, many of which deserve quite more than just a line:

• Greenpeace: Fukushima – état des lieux au 28 mars[fr]
• Radiation counter maxed out at 9999+ CPM… 35 km from Fukushima, well beyond evacuation zone (VIDEO - same story as above but mostly in English)
• Official confirms radioactive water seeping into sea via No. 2 reactor
• Nuclear's green cheerleaders forget Chernobyl at our peril (by John Vidal at The Guardian)
• Real time forecast of spread of radiation through the World

Update (Apr 4):

• From Energy News:
  
• Nuclear industry propaganda about low-level radiation is “absolute rubbish” says physician who taught at Harvard Med School — It’s all about internal emitters (VIDEO)
• Japan Gov’t admits “several months” needed to stop radiation leaks
• Nuclear Expert: Periodic nuclear fissions happening in part of No. 1′s reactor core — “Inadvertent criticality” (VIDEO)
• Nuclear fallout will “engulf” Taiwan starting April 6 — “People should stay home” or “Immediately take off their clothes and cleanse nuclear contaminants” (VIDEO) [And when they say "Taiwan" they also mean all southern Japan and even parts of Korea]
• Japan government covered up high levels radioactivity estimates far away from the exclusion zone 
• Canada suspends mobile radiation measurements around Vancouver, BC “until further notice” as radioactive cloud looms (VIDEO) --- This as... Latest forecast has all of California [and much of Canada] under radiation threat April 6, 7 — Shows levels as high as in Japan (VIDEO)
• From Washington's Blog:
• Governor of Fukushima and Mayor of Town Near Nuclear Reactors Slam Government Response to Nuclear Crisis
• Japanese Using Diaper-Like Absorbant and Superglue-Like Resin to Contain Radiation

Update (Apr 5):

• Radioactive iodine at 7.5 MILLION times legal limit in water around Fukushima — Cesium-137 at 1.1 MILLION times limit (VIDEO)
• Trouble at Fukushima reactors No. 5 and 6 — Cracks are allowing in radioactive water that could destroy emergency generator and other vital equipment (VIDEO)
• Simpsons' nuke jokes banned in parts of Europe. Some companies have totally suppressed the show, which famously begins with a nuclear fuel rod being tossed  around across town.