Orwell's and Kafka's worst nightmares surpassed in Guantanamo

The procedures for even military attorneys (US soldiers appointed by the US Defense Department) to communicate with their clients has been made a total nightmare by the new rules under the "Nobel Peace Prize" President Obama, who promised to close the highly irregular concentration camp, where people are held indefinitely without charges under procedures that amount to perpetual torture and that would cause shame even to Torquemada.

Attorneys cannot anymore admit that something "is classified" when they have to not answer to a client's question because the matter is classified.

Attorneys have to specify beforehand which language they will use with the prisoner, implying that they are being listened to, something that is technically illegal. 

For prisoners arrested (illegally kidnapped in foreign territory in most cases) by the CIA, the attorneys must get Top Secret clearance before they can communicate with their clients. 

Every material that an attorney gives to their clients must first pass now through a special committee that has to give it clearance first, what means that it may take weeks before it reaches the client, indefinitely lengthening the procedures.

Full story HERE.

Strasbourg supports Christian Fundamentalism sadomasochistic disturbing iconography for your kids

Fundamentalist Hardcore BDSM to pervert children's minds

The European Tribunal of Human Rights has decided that public schools in Italy (and therefore other states in EU) may display sectarian symbols of indoctrination, that doing that is not against the rights of non-christian citizens, particularly pupils and their parents. 

But the high tribunal is obviously wrong and infringing against the rights of European citizens that it is set to defend: in Italy like in other EU countries public schools are for all: christians, atheists, muslims, pagans, etc. Imposing this or that iconography is an obvious violation of the rights of citizens and of the necessary secularism that must govern the public sphere in all matters. 

Besides, crucifixes often display the disturbing image of a tortured naked body which I'd say is not appropriate for children but rather for adults with quite peculiar sexual preferences if anything.

In any case, it is clear that the tribunal at Strasbourg is not fulfilling its obligation yo defend the rights of all Europeans and therefore must be fired and a new one elected.

Source: BBC.

Geiger counter shows crazy radioactivity 60-70km inland of Fukushima I

Fukushima city in darker pink, from WMC

That is, according to my estimates roughly where Fukushima city (750,000 inhabitants) is - see locator map left. That is also as close as the reporter was allowed to reach near the central. He wrote:

I am roughly sixty to seventy kilometers due west  from the nuclear plants that the Japanese authorities are struggling so hard to control. 

Full story: CNN.

Follows video:

Found via FOSL.


Update: recent Japanese air footage of the plants:

(From FOSL)

US Air base south of Tokyo being evacuated:

... unprecedented... 

... women and children first...

... please, be orderly, do not panic...

 

(From FOSL, longer version also available there)

Bahrain tyrant massacre citizens. Protests move to Saudi Arabia

I am admittedly absorbed by the nuclear disaster in Japan but I would not like to let this massacre by the Khalifa usurpers of Democracy (People's Power) and their ignominious protectors the Saudi mafia of religious freakdom.

The Saudi invasion of Bahrain happened just after US Defense Secretary, the Bushite Jeff Gates, left Ryad praising the reformist intent of the al Khalifa family. After the massacre his colleague Hillary Rodham Clinton made cosmetic declarations of repulse.

It is a massacre with the Great Seal of the USA stamped as signature of approval. Believing otherwise would be naive. 

So far at least six people are reported dead, the princelings have also reported victims among their repressive forces. The battle around Lulu ("Pearl") Roundabout seems to be ongoing.

It seems very possible that all this has only caused that the protests have overflown (finally!) to Saudi Arabia, where so far the demos had been of limited extent mostly because of fear to repression. 

Follows video of what seems to be large and lively demonstration at Qatif, in the Saudi coast not too far from Bahrain and the key oil and military port of Damman:

If a reader can please translate what the people is chanting, I'd appreciate. Thanks in advance. 

Similar protests have been reported in Seehat, Tarut, Safwa and Awamiya. There are no reports of victims this time but on Saturday at least three people were injured by live fire from state forces. 

If the fire of Revolution catches in Saudi Arabia (and it should), we will for sure witness critical changes in the whole region.

I think that this is really a movement that has no turn back and that is going to define the century to a large extent. All the Arab region (and some neighbors like Iran, Djibouti) is boiling and this is more like a nuclear reaction than any regular fire: it is extremely hard, if possible at all to control. You can't fence the sea, you can't control reality beyond certain point, not even if you are the super-Calif of Washington or if you are a vassal with named Khalifa. Like Japan's nuclear catastrophe, the Arab Revolution is spiraling out of control, only that in this case it can only be for the better.

Main source: Al Jazeera live blog.

Japan nuclear disaster out of control

Reactors 3 and 4 (from Gara)

The rats are leaving the ship... the rich are leaving Japan. The situation may spiral beyond recognition in a matter of hours, as the IAEA has confirmed that all three reactors have core damage and are having meltdowns. To this it must be added the not less important radiation emitted by the spent fuel rods at reactor 4 and potentially also at reactors 5 and 6, which would be like Chernobyl on steroids. Also let us not forget that at least other three nuclear power plants in NE Japan have cooling problems caused by the earthquake.  

Would Japan be Cuba, millions of people would be evacuated already to safer areas by the state in a properly organized effort (at least that's what they do when hurricanes strike). Instead in capitalist Japan (or the USA, remember Katrina or the still ongoing Deepwater Horizon distaster) people seem to have been abandoned to their bad luck as the government is unable to guarantee oil supplies for transport, emergency public transport, shelters for refugees, etc. We watch on TV how, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, refugees from the tsunami almost do not have food nor are being moved to areas relatively safe from radiation. 

When they start the evacuation, if they ever do, it will be too late for most people. Meanwhile the demand of private jets, ejection pods for the ones who can afford them, has increased a lot.

For the EU's Energy Commissioner Günther Oethinger, the situation is effectively out of control and there could be catastrophic events within the coming hours.

For Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Rosatom, the Russian Nuclear Energy Corporation, Japan's nuclear disaster is reaching the worst case scenario. He is worried that his efforts to sell Russian nuclear technology may be hampered by this disaster. 

Thanks to Florida Oil Spill Law blog for keeping track of  the developments at Japan better than most media, even if it is a blog dedicated to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.


Protests in the Basque Country

While popular struggle (and, admittedly, a killing by ETA) stopped the extremely controversial nuclear plant of Lemoiz, a few kilometers away from Bilbao, leaving the territory of Euskal Herria, as understood modernly, nuclear-free, there is one nuclear central in the historical territory of Navarre not far from Miranda de Ebro, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Bilbao. This is the power plant of Garoña (locator map).

The dangerous plant was scheduled to be closed this year but its license was extended for two more years recently. For that reason protests in solidarity with Japan and for the immediate closure of this plant have begun to happen.

Protest today at Bilbao (source)

A larger demonstration has been called for tomorrow evening (19:30 Arriaga Plaza).

CIA and Al Qaeda agent freed by Pakistan

The details are an scandal in themselves: Raymond Davies, the CIA agent and Al Qaeda terrorist caught red handed in Pakistan after he murdered two ISI agents who were following him or maybe trying to arrest him, has been pardoned using a back door that would be unacceptable in any other legal system: payment of blood money.

But worse: the relatives of the victims were illegally arrested and pressed hard so they had no choice but to sign the pardon papers. Once Davies is out of Pakistan, as he is now, and under US protection, he will probably be never prosecuted and he will be able to stay at large.

But let us not forget that, besides being a CIA agent, a (former?) Blackwater (XE) mercenary and a murderer, he is also responsible of the following charges of Wahabbi (pro-Saudi) terrorism:

• Collaboration with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, considered terrorist both in Pakistan and the USA and responsible of the murder of Benazir Bhutto in 2007, and at least 27 different Taliban militants (also considered terrorists)
• Pakistan's secret services, ISI, had accused him of providing nuclear and biological warfare materials to Al Qaeda

So he is an important link to demonstrate how the CIA (and Washington in general) is connected to Al Qaeda (which was originally a CIA creation) and in general to Sunni Islamism, and therefore also to add evidence on how the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.

This explains why he has been liberated but it also says that he should have never been liberated but actually subject to due process, not just because he should pay with prison for even his own life or the crime of murder but specially because there are a lot of critical information that the public must know - in Pakistan as in the USA or anywhere else around the World.

Gaddafi paid Sarkozy's electoral campaign

That is what Moammar al-Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, claims that the popular uprising will be over in 48 hours and that they paid Sarkozy's electoral campaign. Apparently angry at the cosmetic change of attitude by Paris, al-Gaddafi said:

Sarkozy must return all the money he took to finance his electoral campaign. We were the ones who paid for his campaign, we have all the details and we are ready to reveal them. 

We gave him that money so he acted in favor of the Libyan People [read Gaddafi's regime]. But you have disappointed us, Sarkozy. Give the money back. We have all the details: the bank accounts, the documents, the transfer receipts. We will tell all very soon. 

(Source: Gara[es], also at The Guardian[en]).

Whoever who still claims that Gaddafi is a lefty or that the regime of Libya is in any way revolutionary is obviously very wrong. Gaddafi's partners are all right wing governments like Italy's Berlusconi, Russia's Putin, Tunisia's Ben Ali or (now we know) France's Sarkozy. When Castro and others are rising their voices in favor of this freaky dictator, they are only showing their foolishness and a nostalgia for the relatively clearly drawn lines of the 1980s geopolitics.

French Industry Minister: Japan has lost control of Fukushima I

French Industry Minister, Eric Besson, acknowledged today that the situation at Fukushima I is one where the Japanese authorities seem to have lost control:

Let's not beat about the bush. They have visibly lost the essential of control. That is our analysis, in any case, it's not what they are saying.

Environment Minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, described the situation in terms of catastrophe and suggested that French citizens in Japan who do not have a good reason to stay in Tokyo, leave the country or at least head to the South. 

France is  along with Japan one of the two states in the World who generate most of their energy out of atomic methods. Both do that largely for reasons of alleged "independence". It is most reasonable to assume that when French ministers speak in such terms they do for a good reason, as the last thing they want to do is to sound anti-nuclear. 

Source: Reuters (via FOSL)

Other not less important news on the Fukushima I nuclear catastrophe:

High radiation levels at affected plant prevent military helicopters from pouring water. The situation reminds that of Chernobyl, where brave USSR pilots gave away their lives in order to cover the nuclear meltdown with sand (if I recall properly). However one wonders if such kind of heroes do still exist today (or if they can be replaced by robots, what would be the ideal thing to do but probably not yet developed).  

TEPCO has released a photo (source) of the state of reactors 3 and 4 (where spent fuel rods were being kept and which has added to the troubles of its siblings). I wonder why is the image cut in order not to show the state of reactor 2, where a full meltdown was ongoing according to the information available since yesterday. 

Whatever the case, both buildings are in horrible state and reactor no. 3 is clearly destroyed in all its extension (and not just the top as was the case at reactor no. 1 originally).

TEPCO released image of reactors 3 and 4

The latest infos I have read on reactor 2 is that it is no longer sealed (so the meltdown has penetrated the container and is heading into the ground. 

As for reactor no. 3 it is also very likely that the container is damaged and leaking radioactivity. Something quite apparent in the photo above (even if radioactivity is invisible it just takes common sense to realize). 

Also (via FOSL) here you have a very good explanation of why spent fuel rods are potentially even more dangerous than the reactors by Racheal Meadow at MSNBC:

Worse than Chernobyl

There's no category for worse than Chernobyl (level 7 accident) but this is it anyhow: in Chernobyl there was only one reactor affected and, being on dry land, it could be eventually encased from underneath, not without huge effort under a planned economy (much more appropriate for this kind of titanic job, mind you). 

In this case there are three reactors and at least three spent fuel pools (more radioactive than reactors themselves). But what I am considering is that, being just near the sea, you cannot dig under the reactors to encase the meltdown materials because sea water will be filtering over there all the time most probably at this or that depth. 

So I have no idea how they are going to patch this huge nuclear problem but it does look like a nefarious engineering challenge. 

I'd propose to draft all nuclear yes people, specially those with some influence (from engineers to CEOs going through politicians and journalists) and send them as "volunteers" to patch the problem somehow... or die trying. 

Nuclear energy needs heroes, you know.

Benghazi as the new Barcelona

Pepe Escobar is without doubt the best columnist of Asia Times Online, the eclectic Hong Kong e-magazine. He's also the only one which can be considered a leftist. His articles are quite a good read and are often informally translated to Spanish in sites like Rebelión. 

Today he discusses the two hotter processes of the Arab Revolution, Bahrain and Libya, in an article entitled The house of Saud 'liberates' Bahrain.

Some excerpts:

These two paragons of equanimity - the House of Saud and the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty - have just helped to reconfigure a peaceful mass movement towards a constitutional monarchy in Bahrain into a full-fledged revolution. 

Saudi Arabia could not have invaded Bahrain without Washington's assent...

Western elites are staging just an illusion of action in Libya.

The West really doesn't care much about a bunch of kids with guns in Libya, those that have been grabbing a Kalashnikov and wrapping a keffiyah (checkered scarf) around their heads, rushing to the front in sports utility vehicles to fight for a better life. Yet this is Homage to Catalonia revisited, George Orwell on the Spanish Civil War, with Benghazi as the new Barcelona - an outburst of revolutionary fervor that may be crushed by the heavy weaponry of a northern African neo-fascist army. 

Ah, and, if you are a Pakistani mercenary measuring above 1.75 m., the House of Khalifa wants you... to kill, beat and torture the citizens of Bahrain. 

Strassbourg clears Basque leader of insults to the King and orders Spain to pay compensation

In a historical ruling, the European Tribunal of Human Rights has declared that when Arnaldo Otegi said, in 2003, that the King of Spain Juan Carlos II is responsible of torturers he was not insulting but making a legitimate criticism. More so as he was an elected popular representative and as freedom of speech is a precious right.

In that time Otegi was sentenced to one year of prison for insults to the King.

For all that the European tribunal sentences the State of Spain to pay €20,000 to Otegi in moral damages plus the €3,000 of the costs of the judicial procedure.

Originally the Superior Tribunal of the Basque Country judged in favor of Otegi but an appeal to Spanish Supreme Court had him declared guilty. Now he has been vindicated by the highest court of all the European Union against which there is no possible appeal. 

However it is very sad that the we, the Basque People, have to bee all the time asking for uncertain protection from European institutions when we could do very well on our own, would it not be for the Spanish and French occupation. 

The pampered Spanish monarch, appointed by the late Fascist and Fundamentalist dictator Gral. Francisco Franco, has already caused in the past cases of embargoes of publications, often satiric ones. And that is because tyranny does not accept criticism, much less humor. 

His huge salary has not been affected by the recent budgetary cuts.

Source: Gara[es] - Ref. full sentence (PDF)[fr]

Ireland threatens default

The new Irish minister of European Affairs, Lucinda Creighton, has hinted that unless Brussels helps to make the debt burden bearable for the Irish people, the Republic may default. 

This is one of those cases where owing a lot is "beneficial" for the borrower because surely Greece or Portugal, with much smaller foreign debts than Ireland, do not hold any similarly strong bargaining position. Ireland owes (to German and British banks mostly) almost as much as Spain, even if it is 10 times smaller in terms of population and almost the same proportion by GDP, what is really a big problem but not only for the Irish (after all, the indebted banks were mostly foreign-owned).

While a conjectural collapse in Spain would cause much more damage to the European real economy (as this is described, even if only approximately, by GDP) than a collapse in Ireland, a default by Ireland would be quite as bad for EU finances (virtual economy) as a hypothetical default by Spain. 

Of course, the creditor states may want to send the thugs (a military intervention of some sort) but that's not any realistic option, as it would only make things worse. It's no doubt a lot cheaper to devalue the euro and to allow the ECB to directly lend to the states, so they can maneuver with greater flexibility than they have now under the stringent euro policies.

However, as some commenters at the ultimate source of this news for me, Naked Capitalism, say, the ultra-low Irish tax policies are perceived by other EU states as dumping and certainly not helping at all to pay off the debt. It is not easy to demand comprehension when you are not even taxing business properly.

But it is clear that Ireland did not need to assume the private debts of toxic banks (it should have never done that: if you nationalize a toxic company, do always after bankruptcy is declared, not before, so creditors have to put up with their willfully assumed risks and not the public) and that therefore the EU should be offering credit to the Republic at the same rate that it does to private banks (i.e. near 0%) and not at an abusive 5% rate, which is a total scandal.

Indefension, abandonment in Japan

Interesting, shattering, article at Forbes by B. Caulfeld, using the tweets of his friend Yas Idei.

Some excerpts:

Even the employees who had been working to fix the plant evacuated after the explosion.

25 kilometers from the plant ... Gasoline is sold out. There’s no way out of here for the local people.


I visited an evacuation camp this morning. Young mothers are trying to protect their infants from radiation by covering them with plastic bags. There are no rescuers here.

Did you know the radiation level has risen two-to-three times higher than normal in Tokyo? What should we do with our kids?

From the tweeter directly:

radiation level is 40 times higher than normal in Saitama, suburb of Tokyo. gov't says no immediate harm to human body.

my place is included in the area of possible power cuts after an hour. but still no announcement if they really cut.

snow expected from this evening in Tohoku area. no heater, no food, no help for many being isolated.

Probably power was later cut as he has not posted anything in 3 hours. 

(As in so many other cases, found via Florida Oil Spill Law) 

Yemen uses nerve gas against protesters. Morocco goes to the streets

While we are all thinking of the Fukushima nuclear hecatomb, the revolution continues its way in the Arab World.

Yemen using nerve gases against protesters. Pitched street battles in Sanaa:

I'd say that Saleh is about to get kicked... somehow, but he insists in finishing his term which extends to 2013.


In Morocco (Dar el-Beida - Casablanca):

Videos found via Protestation.org. Remember that the situation is also very tense in Bahrain, where Saudi Arabia has intervened, and Libya, where rebels are barely resisting the counter-attack of Gaddafi's forces.

All Fukushima I reactors in 'likely' meltdown (official)

AP reports, citing Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, that the fuel rods appear to be melting in three of the most troubled reactors. 

Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening. 

No specifications are provided about which are these three reactors but I understand that this refers to the three reactors of Fukushima I (or Daichi), all of which were already in dire straits.

Other three nuclear plants in NE Japan have been reported as damaged, though their situation is not yet known to be so severe. 

Found via Florida Oil Spill Law. Other relevant reports mentioned: 

• Reuters live page on Japan's catastrophe
• BBC FAQ page on the meltdown

Also, air view (from FOSL):

Fukushima I overhead view after explosions (click to expand)

From bottom left to up-right you can see reactor 1 (top broken), reactor 2 (intact in the outside) and reactor 3 (the only one working with plutonium, highly damaged and smoking). The reactors at the top right (no. 4 is visible) were not operative when the earthquake and tsunami hit.


Update: habemus Chernobyl:

Reactor 4 (idle at the time of the tsunami) is also affected, as the spent fuel pond has caught fire. This underlines, I believe, how extremely demanding (and hence costly) is the nuclear option, where even idle stuff is extremely dangerous. 

But even more severe is that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has acknowledged that radioactivity is being directly released to the atmosphere at extremely high doses of up 400 milliSievert (mSv)per hour, equivalent to 40,000 milirems or 40 rems per hour. For comparison the usual background radiation is of 2.4 mSv per year or about a millesimal fraction of a millirem per hour. So the emissions may be of the order of a million times the normal background radiation.

This emission of radiation was acknowledged only after the remaining active reactor at Fukushima I plant exploded in what has been claimed to be another hydrogen explosion. However, I have the impression that the explosion at reactor no. 3 may have been the worst one, as it was a huge explosion that left the building utterly destroyed (see photo above). 

In a related development, the Japanese Nikkei index fell down 13% yesterday in spite of all the preventive exercises of the Central Bank.

An animated image from Der Spiegel shows that the plume is mostly blowing towards the Ocean (and hence towards North America eventually, even if it should arrive in a reduced concentration) but that now and then it goes to other directions, quite worryingly to the South-SW, right over Tokyo and its metropolitan area (today), where 35 million people live and where all government and most economical institutions have their seats:

If this is accurate, today Tokyo is being radiated in full. I wonder how people will react to this information when they get it, as they will surely. 

According to FOSL, citing NHK (which I can't watch because it requires Windows something), radioactive iodine and cesium have been already detected in Tokyo. It also mentions (citing Reuters) that radioactivity some 40 times higher than normal has been detected in Tokyo.

Europeans don't like Israel

A new poll shows that most Europeans think very badly of Israel and, by heart at least, support the Palestinian position in the long colonial conflict. 

From Middle East Monitor (found via Jews sans frontieres).

A poll in the six largest states of Western Europe (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands) showed that most Europeans think:

1. In Gaza when told Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
2. That Israel is NOT a democracy nor treats all religious/ethnic groups equally.
3. That the pro-Israeli lobby is overly influential in the UK, while the Palestine lobby is not.
4. That Israeli oppression of Palestinians and settlements are the main obstacles to peace.
5. That Israel is the primary aggressor, Palestinians are the primary victims. Israel is the main threat to World peace. 
6. That Israeli stand on Gaza (siege, attacks, flotilla attack) is illegal.
7. That Hamas should be included in peace talks.
8. That Israel exploits the historical suffering of the Jewish people,  etc.
9. That Jerusalem should be designated a neutral international city.
10. That the pro-Israeli stand of European fascists ("far right") is perceived as being WRONG.

References (PDF format): full ICM poll report, synthesis report.

Saudi and other GCC troops intervene in Bahrain

The popular revolution is so advanced in Bahrain that the dictator clan, the Khalifa dynasty, had to ask for military support to ally countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, an organization whose main power is Saudi Arabia, which also has its own problems, so far contained by means of military and police terror. (Source: Al Jazeera)

The embattled autocrats, a remnant of British feudalist colonial policies, have sent their police forces to shoot a point blank against protesters, sometimes with live ammo and in other cases with rubber bullets. However all the repression does not seem able to quell the revolution but rather is like setting fire to oil.

Follows Al Jazeera video (full story here), where a policeman is seen emptying his pistol against protesters and then running away and then another policeman shoots a rubber bullet against the face of another protester while his buddies cheer him:

A less explicit footage from Protestation.org shows a view of the camp set up by protesters at Manama. A demonstrator was allegedly shoot by police also at point blank in this scene but the moment of the shooting is not captured as the camera was looking elsewhere (we see the citizen refusing to run and holding a yellow sign and later we see him falling unconscious and being retrieved by other people):

Update: the column of Saudi troops entering the island state at Euronews and the negative opinion among Bahrainis about this development.

Japan nuclear disaster might be "worse than Chernobyl"

That is what Chinese official Xinhua agency suggests, citing Indian experts. The lack of accurate information by the government doesn't seem to help to keep people calm about the dangers but it is clear that, with 4 nuclear plants damaged, one of which is exploding and another one which has produced dangerous levels of radiation, all in the midst of widespread destruction by a huge quake and tsunami, thinking "everything is alright" is not an option.

Reactor no. 3 exploded in a larger bang than that of reactor no. 1. As the first one it has also been blamed on hydrogen accumulation and it is claimed that the reactor's container is still intact but it is hard to believe that such a sequence of explosions and emergencies are not a greater danger than officially reported. Reactor no. 2 has also lost all its coolant, maybe because of the neighboring explosions, and is therefore set to follow its "siblings" into catastrophe.

Video of reactor no. 3 explosion:

The Japanese authorities are not yet saying if this second explosion has led to uncontrolled release of radiation, according to Reuters.

Notice please how this explosion is much much larger than the one at reactor no. 1, suggestive, I would think, of a true nuclear explosion, rather than a mere hydrogen or steam blowout.

Related news stories from around the Net, largely via Florida Oil Spill Law, which is doing a prime job following the catastrophe:

• The Scotsman: Japan: crippled nation on nuclear knife-edge. Plutonium of reactor 3 is harder to control, as it burns at much higher temperature.
• Wind blowing southwards towards Tokyo today.
• US Navy detects radioactive plume 100 miles (c. 180 km) from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean.
• Fuel rods of reactor no. 2 (the only one which has not yet exploded) were fully exposed after the earthquake - Kyodo News. 
• Very curious satellite photo comparisons at the New York Times.

Wikileaks: Pentagon pushes its way ahead

Hillary Clinton's spokesman P.J. Crowley has been pushed to resign after he declared that the Pentagon's sexual abuse (my description) against whistleblower Bradley Manning was ridiculous and counter-productive and stupid.

This development confirms who is the real boss in the USA: the Pentagon. 

In a parallel development a US court in Alexandria, Virginia (a suburb of Washington where the Pentagon is located) has ordered the seizure of the Twitter accounts of Wikileaks and of Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who has supported Wikileaks in the past and was somewhat prominent in the release of the video of the murder of Reuters journalists and several civilians by US helicopters in Iraq in 2007, known as Collateral Murder. 

Hiding US violence, harming US business

Since the First Gulf War, the USA has made all in its hand to hide the reality of their institutional violence against diverse peoples around the World, culminating in the hiding of the massacre at the other gulf: the Gulf of Mexico against its own citizens just to satiate the vicious demands of some of the largest multinational corporations.

That was somewhat of a success in the early 1990s, when the information of war against Iraq was strictly filtered by the Pentagon. However what has happened since then is that we are looking for news and information elsewhere. 

In general we are looking for information in many more diverse places through the Internet. And we crave real information, be it via Wikileaks, Al Jazeera, twits (no my choice but it's a trend), blogs and a long and personalized etcetera. 

The Pentagon and other power structures are unease with that: their imperial dreams (our nightmares) can go down the toilet too easily if the information just keeps flowing - as it will no doubt. 

Their reaction is ridiculous and counter-productive and stupid: they are actually causing much harm to US companies because they have to bow to such totalitarian rulings. Would I create an account at PayPal or Amazon or Facebook after what they have done? No way! I would look for an equivalent in Iceland maybe... somewhere where my rights will be guaranteed and the bullies can't snoop into my business or get them sabotaged overnight with a court order, very possibly a secret court order issued under the state of emergency that exists in the USA since the psi-op self-attacks of 2001.

In this sense it must be said that Twitter, unlike the other companies, at least behaved honestly and defended up to where they could their customer's rights, securing that at least they could inform their customer of what was going on. But if they want to stay popular they may need to move outside of the USA, to somewhere where privacy and civil rights are guaranteed.

Massive rallies at Portugal for the right to work

Video via Protestation.org

Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese citizens (200,000 according to some sources) have more or less spontaneously gathered to rally at Lisbon and other Portuguese cities yesterday against the new austerity measures imposed by Brussels, the IMF and their local vassal, conservative PM Socrates.

The most interesting feature of these protests are that they are happening outside what is the established traditional class opposition like unions and left-wing parties, but has been called by informal groups with some projection in the Internet, notably one called Geração À Rasca, Precarious Generation in English (a transparent reference to the lack of job security we face these days).

According to an online manifesto,  the protesters demand the application of Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that:

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

They claim therefore:

• the right to employment
• the right to education
• the improvement of job conditions and end of precariety
• the recognition of qualifications, competence and experience by means of dignified contracts and salaries 

200,000 people in a small country like Portugal with no other appeal that some Internet and street agitation is, I understand, a massive success which should put the oligarchs very much in defensive mode.

As one of the callers, humorist Jel, said in an interview, everything worth it has been achieved on the streets. I'd add, if they have to cut, they may cut the ties of the bourgeois oligarchs and their political minions, the size of the guns of the tanks, the payments of debt to fat people overseas, etc. But the rights of the workers must not be touched, the opposite is true: they must be advanced, though (of course) that will only happen if the workers, the citizens, go out to the streets and protest.

Thumbs up for the Portuguese People.

More from the organizers (in Portuguese) at: Geração À Rasca.

More in English at: Euronews (brief video), Global Voices Online, AllVoices...

Update: video of discourses at the demo of Lisbon (from Protestation.org):

Yemen: dictator murders protesters

Besides Libya, Bahrain and the uneasiness of state terror in Saudi Arabia, the hotspot of the Arab Revolution these days is in Yemen.

Until recently protests and counter-protests had been mostly peaceful but now the government has moved to quell the popular uprising with violence, shooting gas and live ammunition against the crowds, murdering at least four.


Full stories at News Daily and Al Jazeera.


Update:

A bit not directly related but you can watch the video of the demo yesterday at Bahrain at Protestation.org.