Japan to reopen nuclear power plant

Japan has been for more than a year without a single watt of nuclear-generated electricity... and nothing has happened, demonstrating that Japan does not need the nuclear energy that is destroying the country and damaging its environs up to North America. 

However the Japanese state has decided to reopen the nuclear power plant of Ooi. 

As LaPrimavera says, 

If the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident taught us anything, it is that you cannot necessarily [remain able to] stop the plant when something bad does happen. All these politicians must be hoping that [a disaster] won't happen during their tenures.

Source: Ex-SKF.

Northern Basque militant Filipe Bidart allowed to return

Filipe Bidart was the most notable leader of Iparretarrak, the small but brave guerrilla organization that faced the might of the French state between 1973 and 2000.

Iparretarrak, meaning The Northerners, was founded by Bidart and others in 1973, hoping to extend the armed struggle for the liberation of the Basque Country to the much smaller Northern regions under French occupation. They were specially active in the 1980s. Most actions were victimless but in 1982 they killed a gendarme (French military police). 

Instead several Iparetarrak activists died in action, while another one, Popo, remains disappeared since 1983.

Filipe Bidart was captured in 1988 in Bokale, near Baiona (Bayonne) and was jailed until 2007, when he obtained conditional freedom. He was however forbidden from entering the Basque Country until 2014 but that limitation has been removed now. 

Welcome back.

Sources: Kazeta[eu], Gara[es].

Lagarde: pay your taxes

The arrogant imperialist IMF boss and sidekick of Nicholas Sarkozy, Christine Lagarde was the other day insulting Greek workers who, according to her petty fascist imagination, do not pay their taxes. Naturally Greek leaders, including Tsipras, quickly protested her defamation - but she is yet to apologize. 

But now we know that the one who does not pay any taxes is her. 

Christine Lagarde enjoys a yearly salary of $467,940 (€374,352), plus allowances, well above what most of us, common mortals, can even dream. A salary that comes from our taxes (from the taxes of almost every single person around the World because she works for a UN agency), pays no taxes at all. 

Not in the USA, not in France and certainly not in Greece. 

This is allegedly a provision of the Vienna Convention, however she is probably not entitled to such special status after it was ruled that her predecessor, Strauss-Kahn, was lawfully arrested and not entitled the protection of diplomats. 

So... Lagarde: pay your taxes and shut up that dirty mouth.

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

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

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

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

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

Sources[es]: El País, Sare Antifaxista.

Spain's PM babbles something to excuse the billions for Bankia

Gate of Europe or KIO towers,
formerly Kuwait Investment Office (a fiasco),
then final scenario for a fictional 'Satan's coming',
now Bankia (another fiasco)

For a President of the Government (the official title equivalent to Prime Minister or Chancellor) who has been just a few months in charge Mariano Rajoy looks like he could resign at any moment. He won't but his position is so weak, not in Parliament but in terms of real economic viability and public credibility, that he could well be about to resign. 

But in my opinion the worst is that Rajoy does not seem to have any clear ideas, babbling rather than exposing and doubting rather than directing with firm hand. And he's about the less horrible cadre that the ruling party has in stock (it's full of people who can't do anything straight, not even pretend they do). 

After claiming that one plus one is not two or, more precisely, that the current lack of credibility of the Spanish state in the debt markets is not caused by the crisis of Bankia, he appealed to "Europe" in vague terms and fantasized that the debt goals will be met, what mean that the €23.5 billions will be extracted from the budget. 

After controversially cutting already €27 billions there is few room to operate. More so when most of those cuts directly affect not just the well being of citizens (social services) but the very economical engine (public investment, internal demand).

However, even if its common sense, the chief manager of Spain did not even consider dropping Bankia, as has been demanded by many already. In an exercise of hypocrisy he equated the collapse of the bank (which could be managed so small customers don't suffer at all, as is normal) with the bankruptcy of Spain, when in fact it is obvious that the opposite is the truth: that saving Bankia is going to cost dearly to the Spanish state. 

And most will be taken from the people: education, health care, pensions... not from the pathetic king nor the hated police nor the useless military nor the salaries of sus señorías...

Rajoy did not consider either to persecute those guilty of this scam, declaring with that action full accomplice. Let's not forget that Mariano Rajoy and Rodrigo Rato are party buddies and used to be vice-presidents in the Aznar government, so bootlicking of George Bush Jr. and his hateful invasion of Iraq. 

The precise evidence may never come but the clear message is: we PP buddies have plundered Bankia and now you stupid common Spanish citizens will pay for it, haw haw. I'm not playing the blame game here: it was the first PP government who organized this disaster of the brick bubble in the time when their partners in the USA (Bush Jr.) and Britain (Blair) did exactly the same. Just that in Spain it's always a tad more extreme when it comes to farce.

Among the most implicated are Rodrigo Rato (former Economic Vice-President along Rajoy, former IMF Director) and Esperanza Aguirre (President of Madrid Economic Community), some of whose closest associates are deep in the mud, several marquises, the whole Government of the Valencian Community (knowingly corrupt but re-elected by a brainless citizenry), etc. 

Aguirre, who was Minister of Culture with Aznar, became back in the day the laughing stock of the whole country after comitting several public gaffes that evidenced her utmost ignorance in matters of culture. However she has strong support in the most fascist-mafioso sectors of the Spanish Right and became President of the Region of Madrid. Now we can only imagine that the capital of the state is full of finance holes and what the Spaniards call chanchullos: petty corruption - or maybe not so petty.

Rajoy seems to be announcing that other saving banks will follow suit. He mentioned Catalunya Caixa and Nova Caixa Galicia. It is not clear however if he says so we get ready for the worst or just to deflect the political impact, as the culprits in these two cases may be not so directly related with his own party.

Nobody knows why precisely €23.465 billion. The figure seems to have been agreed between the new administrator and the government but no details have been provided. Worse: there is an announcement of a stockholders' assembly in a month that hopes to issue stock for value of €60 billion. Does that mean that the bank has a hole for the value of almost 30% the Spanish budget? Many wonder

Foreseeing? What is now the see of Bankia was once the scenario of a film on the Apocalypse: El Día de la Bestia

If so, how many Spanish budgets are needed to bail out all the Spanish banking system? 

Naturally we can't but understand at this point why Raxoi cries desperately to Brussels for some sort of help, whatever, but what I do not understand is why the system is not cleaned as it deserves: bankruptcy for all, guaranteeing just the current accounts and the savings up to a ceiling. 

Sure, this could trigger a domino of bankruptcies all around the world, but better that than wasting not just some public money but a lot of it. 

I even doubt that Spain can assume such massive payments without dissolving itself as state and becoming a new Somalia of sorts. A state can't guarantee the financial system, no way: it should not, it must not and it cannot. 

This is Ireland to the Nth power. It could be Iceland but Spain has the wrong government, the wrong opposition and the wrong everything.

Ref.: Gara[es], Spanish budget project 2012[es].

Radioactive bluefin tuna caught near California

The tuna is safe to eat by US standards but it has levels of radioactivity that are ten times higher than it was normal in the past, indicating clearly that the byproduct of the Fukushima catastrophe is arriving, even if somewhat diluted, to US coasts. 

Tuna are almost top tier predators hence the contamination tends to accumulate in them... and in us humans as well.

Source: EneNews, 10news.


Update: the exact measure of radiation (by Stanford University researchers) was:

Cesium-134: 4 Bq/kg
Cesium-137: 6.3 Bq/kg

A Becquerel (Bq) equals one disintegration (count) per second (CPS) or 60 CPMs.

Source: Ex-SKF (citing Kyodo News).

Institutional homophobic repression in the Fascist Russia of Putin

Russian LGTB activists and solidary people protested yesterday against the growing homophobia by the regime, which has approved local laws that forbid what they call "homosexual propaganda", i.e. the defense of the rights of homosexual people to live freely as anybody else. 

Christian-Fascist groups attacked them and then police charged against everybody indiscriminately arresting as many as 40 people. 

Russia and Moldova share the dubious honor of being the most homophobic states in Europe, according to the LGTB International Association. According to them Russia is closer to Iran than to the West in this aspect.

Source: Sare Antifaxista[es].

Spanish flag burnt in Añana

Guess which flag is missing? The one nobody wants

The Spanish flag forced upon the Basque People by the occupant forces has burnt in one town hall: that of Añana.

Suspects: everybody, guilty: Spain itself.

Ref. Sare Antifaxista[es].

Morocco: 50,000 rally against the Islamist government

Some 50,000 rallied yesterday in Casablanca, the largest city of Morocco, in protest for the inability of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Islamists) to deliver either justice or development, never mind both. The labor unions, who organized the protest, demanded social dialogue.

Source: Al Jazeera.

Lies more lies and what to believe in Syria (if anything)

You may have noticed that I'm keeping a prudent silence in the case of Syria. Of course part of the problem is that the most militant activists are fundamentalist fascists paid by Saudi Arabia and the CIA (there's also a legitimate non-fascist opposition I have been told but it's hard to discern). But the main problem is that much of what we are told may not be true. 

For example, Random Pottings denounces the following manipulation by a "reputed" (ha!) Zionist Imperialist medium as the BBC:

This image has been presented in today May 27 BBC (it seems already removed and replaced by a similar one) as illustrating the massacre that happen in Houla, Syria. 

Its author Marco di Lauro knows better. This is the true description:

Al Musayyib, Iraq - May 27, 2003
An Iraqi child jumps over a line of hundreds of bodies, in a school where they have been transported from a mass grave, to be identified. They were discovered in the desert in the outskirts of Al Musayyib, 40 km south of Baghdad. It has been estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 Iraqis had been reported missing in the region south of Baghdad. People have been searching for days for identity cards or other clues among the skeletons to try to find the remains of brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters and even children who disappeared when Saddam's government crushed a Shi'ite uprising following the 1991 Gulf War.

How ironic! 

But also how many lies we are fed each day by the "free media" which are, I must realize, anything but free. For example I find myself dispelling every other day misconceptions about the Greek welfare system (what welfare system and what the hell?!) fed by the Anglosaxon and German propaganda machinery under apparent command of the Goldman Sachs puppetmasters. 

It's as easy as going to Eurostat and checking the facts but many people just believe what that shitty "free media" says at face value. 

Pathetic! But also extremely dangerous...

The Banking crisis explodes in Spain

And I doubt there is enough money to save the collapsing banks.

Goirigolzarri, the new CEO of Bankia, appears to be a cynic who does not dare to blame his predecessor Rodrigo Rato and hopes to get from the state budget nothing less than €23.4 billion. If that's the man with a solution, then there is no solution. 

These €23.4 billion are 87% of what the Spanish governments have saved in the last year or two with the brutal social cuts.

Naturally there could be, there surely is, another bank behind Bankia also needing a capital injection. Spain just does not have the money for all that. Hence...

... Dani Maeztu (Aralar) asked Spain to let the banks collapse. 

Indeed. 

References[es]: Gara (link 1, link 2), Público, La Haine.

141 years of the defeat of the Paris Commune

From its ashes arose the concept of Communism.

I do not have time right now to write something coherent but it's always important to understand the roots of Revolution.

See: Paris Commune (Wikipedia), Hace 141 años que la Comuna de París fue derrotada salvajemente (Boltxe Kolektiboa at La Haine)[es].

Manual of the Catalan policeman

It could be from anywhere else but it does explain what is happening in Catalonia under the rule of some sociopathtic personalities crowned with undue authority. Excerpts:

Even if the protest or demonstration (...) is not expected to be violent, we can provoke a bit, with unjustified and not at all peaceful arrests a few days earlier to heat up the ambient. We can also make pre-emptive raids in places where people of the ideology of the organizers meet with the pretext of searching for drugs or whatever. The raid will be badly done intently and with a humiliating treatment to heat up the emotions. 

On top of the previous strategy, if some uncontrolled group initiates violent actions, police units will not move and even when destruction begins to be generalized, police actuation is delayed intently until the damages become socially unacceptable. It is then when police charges begin, charges that in no moment attempt to be dissuasive. Then we go directly against the demonstrators, who are already considered vandals, and attack them with enough speed so they cannot run away and are forced to physical combat. 


In this stage the demonstrators can't but attack the police with all they have and that we have let them have. They are actually defending but it does not seem so. They have been corralled (...)


That is what we want (...) Those who have avoided the corralling, now face the rest of police units, who prevent them from running away and who do not take prisoners (no arrests). Dispersion is no voluntary but it is provoked by our batons and any attempt of resistance is contested with exaggerated violence and massive arrests. 

Source: Tercera Información[es].

Revolution and humility

I borrow here an anecdote from Borroka Garaia Da[es], it happened at a conference in Caracas by the historical Sandinista Comandante Tomás Borge, recently deceased. A member of the public asked him:

    Comandante, why was the Sandinismo defeated?

And Borges replied:

    Because we lost our humility.

Egyptian Presidential election defeats hopes of change

Mursi (L) & Shafiq (R)

The provisional results with some 90% of the vote counted and no known reports of irregularities (yet?), suggest that the runoff will be between two far-right candidates: the Islamist Mohamed Mursi and the former minister of Mubarak Ahmed Shafiq. 

The big hopeful of the revolutionary youth, the Left-Nasserist Hamdeen Sabbahi seems to be third, not enough to take part in the runoff. 

This result should not be too surprising since the Islamists (two different branches, one of which saw their presidential candidate banned) collected above 65% of the vote in the elections for Parliament. 

According to Ahram the provisional results (43% turnout) are:

1. Mursi (Muslim Brotherhood) 5,553,097 (25.30%)
2. Shafiq (ind., ex-Mubarak minister) 5,210,978 (23.74%)
3. Sabbahi (Nasserist, Dignity Party) 4,739,983 (21.60%)
4. Abul-Fotouh (ind. former Arab League President)3,936,264 (17.93%)
5. Moussa (ind.) 2,407,837 (10.97%)

The urban-rural divide is quite apparent in the results from Cairo (final), where Sabbahi won and the Islamists scored rather low:

1. Sabbahi 993,464 (34.6%)
2. Shafiq 744,138 (25.9%)
3. Mursi 579,715 (20.1%)
4. Abul-Fotouh 553,200 (19.2%)

The feeling in Cairo is that the Revolution is dying. A Sabbahi campaign volunteer, a young actor named Suleiman, told Al Jazeera that:

It's bad for me, as a youth, to see the revolution dying. Most Egyptians disappointed me.

So far it is not clear which will be the role of the President, as the new constitution still has to be drawn, but Egypt has a long history of monarchs and strong presidents, so it's hard to imagine it performing just a protocol role as happens in so many European republics. 

Basque Country: inquisitorial trial for showing prisoners' photos

The Spanish Inquisition has not lost any of its grip, sadly enough, and these days it is judging some citizens who dared to exhibit photos of Basque prisoners in demand of their rights being upheld and their expatriation to far away lands being reversed. 

The "crime" happened in 2009, in the context of the Korrika, a popular jogging march across the country to gather funds for the Basque language academies' network AEK. In this context, people and groups "buy" a kilometer or several and have the right to exhibit their demands while jogging for Basque language in exchange for their money.

Naturally prisoner support groups have been often present since decades ago without further ado. But, as of late, the Spanish Inquisition and some Basque acolytes have begun a campaign against the solidarity with our prisoners and have begun criminalizing the show of their photos as "terrorism", even if many of them are in jail just for socio-political activity, having nothing to do with violence of any sort. 

In protest for this political persecution, activists of Eleak have demonstrated today in Pamplona showing photos of historical political prisoners from around the World who often today enjoy widespread recognition as political leaders or for other reasons:

The ex-prisoners whose photos were exhibited are: Nelson Mandela (attorney, guerrilla fighter, political leader and eventually President of South Africa), Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemalan rights activist and Peace Nobel laureate), Rosa Parks (who famously ignited the African-American struggle for their rights in the 1960s by disobeying an abusive law), Bobby Sands (IRA prisoner who died in hunger strike in the 1980s) and Malcom-X (African-American political leader who famously left said: "Liberate our minds by any means necessary").

Source: Ateak Ireki[es] (includes video).

Rajoy admits it: austerity doesn't work

That's what he told him to the French President, F. Holland: 

The policies that we Europeans believe in, such as controlling state spending and reforms to boost growth, ultimately have no effect.

For once I have to agree with him. There's no way Europe can work as it does now: like a colony of Germany. 

In his rather unusual ability to speak out the obvious he also said:

Europe has to come up with an answer because we can't go on like this for long.

I knew that several years ago, Mariano. But well... better late than never. 

Raxoi (that's the correct spelling of his surname in the native language of his country: Galicia) is not the only right-wing European leader forced to pragmatism after the IMF recipes have failed once and again (no news here but maybe in Tory Street it is), Britain's Cameron is also asking now for stimulus policy at European level.

Source: Telegraph, who also hints at the formation of a Latin bloc in the Eurozone, now that that rat of Sarko is gone.

Spain: Bankia asks for €15 billion (update: €19 bilion!)

Bad Feng Shui?

The new, state-appointed direction of the nationalized savings bank, which already received several billions weeks ago, asks for a public input that would throw to the trash bin the vast majority of the savings effort (the much protested budget cuts) of the Latin European country (€27 billions). 

This means that the healthcare, salaries and pensions that people will not get end up in Bankia. 

I'd say: guarantee workers' salaries for some time, current accounts and savings accounts up to a reasonable amount. Then drop the bank, declaring bankruptcy. Doing anything else is idiotic.

But this is a key moment in the financial crisis of Spain, or more exactly its banks: following the Icelandic path (what I say) and cutting loses or, as they will probably do (for bad), following the Irish path to make citizens assume, against any common sense, the debts of private agents.

Update: the latest figure is of €19 billion, to add to the €4.5 billion already injected, being a total of nothing less than €23.5 billion, barely less than the whole public budget savings from the social cuts.

Imagination versus power in Quebec

From Kasama:

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

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

Graphene solar cells thrice more efficient

The overall efficiency is still at 8.6% rate of conversion (light to electricity) but it's a big jump from the 2.9% achieved earlier. In any case we must not forget that the source of this electricity (solar light) is gratis an abundant, so this rate of conversion is quite good, provided that we want to make use of it and not keep dragging our feet in the dirty methods of energy-generation based on petroleum/gas or (worse) uranium.

The researchers said that if graphene solar cells reach 10 percent power conversion efficiency they could be a contender in the market place, if production costs are kept low enough.

Or if we account for the horrible hidden costs of the dirty energies, which are deflected towards the environment, the public and a future that is more and more our present and past - if we begin taxing (or totally banning) dirty energies for all the damage they cause.

This advance is just one of a number that have happened in the last years only in the field of solar energy. I used to keep track of this better at my old non-specialized blog Leherensuge.

Source: Science Daily. 

Video of the South Tel Aviv pogrom

The anti-African pogrom in South Tel Aviv, incited and protected by the Zionist authorities, has some images:

Source: Jews sans frontieres, who discuss the key ringleader role of Netanyahu and the whole colonial government in this Mediterranean Kristallnacht.

Update (May 26): sorry but the video has been removed using "copyright fascism".

Enslaved immigrants revolt in Mississippi prison

Immigrants imprisoned in a private prison (slave-labor factory) in Natchez, Mississippi (USA), the Adams County Correctional Center, took over the center yesterday. As of now it seems that the revolt was quelled.

This, we must say, is class war in action: these people are workers who have been arrested for just trying to survive and are being exploited by a prison system that has become slave-labor factories (who incidentally compete with you because prisoner-slaves are paid with a mere token 93 cents/day, fed and beaten - you can't be more competitive than that). 

The prison is owned by the Corrections Corporation of America (the largest slave trader corporation of the USA and maybe the World nowadays), who is trying to keep the occupancy ratio as close as possible to 100% in order to maximize benefits (what causes more arrests and convictions than should be normal).

For what I have been able to gather one guard was killed and some other 19 people were injured, among both repressive forces and rebels.

Sources: diverse mainstream media, Kasama.

See also:

• Getting Paid 93 Cents a Day in America? Corporations Bring Back the 19th Century (J.B. Freeman at AlterNet)
• Vermont pigs get labeled
• Slavery after slavery after slavery...

State-sanctioned pogrom in south Tel Aviv (Random Pottins)

From Random Pottins:

State-sanctioned pogrom in south Tel Aviv 

TIME was that the Hatikvah district of south Tel Aviv, its name shared with the Zionist anthem and meaning, ironically, "the Hope", was known for housing riots, juvenile delinquency and violent clashes with police. It is still a poor neighbourhood, evidently, but with Israeli politicians concerned that the public is turning from the national "security" obsession to concern about social issues, where better for them to start a racist campaign diverting discontent into mob violence against scapegoats?

Last night thousands of people, including imported thugs and their women cheerleaders, listened to right-wing politicians at a rally in Hatikvah quarter, blaming problems on the mainly African asylum seekers who have arrived in recent years.

After hearing from Likud politicians and those further to the Right the crowd turned on reporters identified as left-wing and unpatriotic by right-wing activists, and then surged out to beat African men and women on the street, and attack homes and shops. Police said later nine arrests had been made.

Miri Regev of the Likud party had described asylum seekers as a "cancer in our body," and promised to do everything "in order to bring them back to where they belong". His Likud colleague Danny Danon, who heads a lobby group campaigning against illegal immigration (not to be confused with Israel's illegal settlements) said the only solution to the problem would be to "begin talking about expulsion".

"We must expel the infiltrators from Israel. We should not be afraid to say the words 'expulsion now'," he was reported as saying.

... full story at Random Pottins.

“We didn’t know it was impossible, so we did it!” The Quebec Student Strike celebrates its 100th day (Tidal)

From Tidal:

“We didn’t know it was impossible, so we did it!” The Quebec Student Strike celebrates its 100th day

Malav Kanuga

Origins of an unlimited general strike (“grève générale illimitée”)

Students in Quebec are marking their 100th day of an unlimited general strike on Tuesday, May 22nd, the culmination of the most stunning mass protest movements of recent months and North America’s largest student movement in years. In fact, the mobilizations in Quebec might just be Canada’s Arab Spring.

Students have been organizing against tuition hikes for nearly one and a half years, when the Quebec government first proposed to raise tuition fees by 75% over five years (amended to 82% over seven years by the government at the end of April). Before the general strike began in February, protests, demos, trainings, letter writing campaigns and attempts to negotiate in good faith with the government were consistently met with obstinate silence from the Charest administration. For the students there has been a growing sense of urgency and a shared recognition that increased tuition means a heavier student debt burden, hundreds of more hours a year spent working instead of studying, less access for working class and lower class students, and a shift in university culture toward the market, the commodification of education, the financialization of student life, and the privatization of the university.

Even if fees increase, Quebec students would be paying less than other provinces in Canada, a gap the provincial government has been aiming to close. But so far every time the administration has proposed to do so, students have gone on strike. Deep in the Quebec struggle is a culture of solidarity and security, a social fabric, a sense of community that endures and mobilizes a powerful defense of their commonwealth. Call it what you will, it is precisely this that Margaret Thatcher declared war upon on May 1st 1981 when she said that the project of neoliberalism is to change the heart and soul of a ‘collectivist’ spirit, and its means is economics. Indeed, the Finance Minister of the Quebec Liberal government recently called its austerity policies “a cultural revolution” and they are not shy about their plan to reorganize Quebecois life through fiscal discipline. The Modèle québécois of social collectivism (in its traditional social democratic sensibility, but also, and more importantly, its directly democratic ethic that has emerged in the course of the last 14 weeks of strike) is the target of these policies, specifically through education and health. This is what explains the Charest government’s attempts to break the strike and destroy the student unions.

... continue reading at Tidal.

Antifascist cell attacks Nazi meeting at Chicago

Location of the incident

The Neonazi meeting, which pretended to hide under the pretext of a wedding party or an Irish heritage meeting but had been publicized in the infamous Nazi Internet forum Stormfront for its real intentions, was attacked by a group of 30 activists who beat the Nazis causing them several injuries and effectively sabotaging the meeting.

Five antifascists have been arrested. 

Source: War on Society.

Fromer Japanese ambassador in Switzerland denounces his government, alerts on Fukushima's imminent global danger

He said in rather good English to the press:

I’m Mr. Murata former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland.

The voices of the victims are not being heard sufficiently because of the efforts of the minimizers of the accident.

Today I want to only pick up one question, the problem of the Unit 4 reactor at Fukushima.
I’m saying this is a global security issue.

Because once an earthquake beyond a magnitude 6 or 7 happens, then the world starts heading towards the ultimate catastrophe.

According to the expert Robert Alvarez, the amount of cesium-137 is 85 times more than Chernobyl.

[Garbled Speech], but there’s not the sense of crisis.

I would like to ask your cooperation to alert the whole world to this danger.

Full video here, excerpted video and main source at Energy News.

More military/police occupation displays in Navarre

Spanish troops have seen marching through the Navarrese towns of Gares and Mañeru with their weapons readied. The occupant soldiers marched in several groups of 5-10 scaring the populace. 

These last days have also seen increased anti-terrorist (or rather terrorist, I'd say because they only aim to terrorize the people with their menacing presence and illegitimate policing) controls by the infamous Spanish military police corps Guardia Civil. 

Incidentally, yesterday it was made public by the Unión de Guardias Civiles (illegal because soldiers can't unionize and these police agents are also professional soldiers) that they are raising illegal police files on nearly everyone. If you happen to be identified in one of these "anti-terrorist" controls, you get a "terrorist" file in the police archives. 

Such is the reality of "democracy" under the Spanish military boot. 

Sources[es]: Garesko Auzalan, Gara.

International Atomic Energy Agency controls and censors World Health Organization

Very interesting and scary (albeit rather long) videos today at Energy News, denouncing how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an entity designed to promote nuclear energy (of interest for the Industrial-Military Complex mostly), has the power to block the publication of any World Health Organization report. This power is reciprocal but it's hard to imagine why the WHO would want to censor IAEA.

This means that in practical terms, the pro-nuclear camp controls absolutely all health information coming out from the United Nations, what explains all the lies about Chernobyl, the worst nuclear catastrophe before Fukushima.

I include here only one of the two videos but the other one is also very dramatic and interesting (and different point of view as well):

No cold shutdown: corium will be there forever

EneNews has other interesting info today (and often). For example, Dr. Caldicott (from the reputed International Physicians Against Nuclear War) denounces what is obvious for all of us following the Fukushima catastrophe with due care and healthy skepticism: that the cold shutdown claim is a blunt lie: the corium (uranium-plutonium lava) is still there and will be forever emitting radiation, penetrating across the Earth's crust and potentially reacting at any moment with further catastrophic results.

··> LINK


Reactor no. 3 explosion sent radiation right away to Tokyo

Again from EneNews: a US government (NARAC) map shows how the radioactive particles after the fated day of the second explosion (March 13 2011) went right to Tokyo

··> NARAC paper (PDF), including several other maps of interest illustrating how the particles probably arrived to US territory (and Eastern Siberia).

Japan: Protests continue in Kitakyushu against radioactive debris import and incineration

It is the least that they can do: protest against their planned murder, and very specially that of their children (who are much more susceptible to radiation than adults), by the Japanese authorities, who have gone totally mad since the Fukushima catastrophe (or were probably mad before but was not so obvious maybe). 

The citizens of Kitakyushu keep their protests against the imposition of destroying their lives just because someone in the hierarchies had that "brilliant" idea of scattering the radioactive debris all around, poisoning the whole country instead of trying to contain the damage to a region.

"Adults should protect the future of children. We're against disaster debris burning. Protect Kyushu for Japan".

Source: Ex-SKF.

Pablo Neruda was murdered by Pinochet

Full story at Al Jazeera.

Pablo Neruda

(...) Neruda was planning to go to Mexico to raise opposition to the military regime from abroad, and that the Mexican government had sent a plane to fetch him and other high-profile soon-to-be-exiles. The problem was that the military junta would not readily give Neruda a safe conduct pass to leave the country. He was the most well known Chilean after the slain president, and was sure to make trouble if he left the country. 

That's why - according to Araya - a plan was devised to take Neruda to the hospital, so it could be argued that his health warranted a humanitarian safe conduct pass. The plan worked and the pass was issued. But Neruda was never to leave the clinic alive.

Almost 40 years have passed since his death. Yet when Manuel Araya tells the story, it is as though he were reliving it. He says he and Mrs Neruda had returned to Isla Negra to fetch the poet's suitcase, when he received a phone call from Neruda. "He sounded very upset and told me that something had happened, that a doctor had come into his room while he was napping and injected him in the stomach with something that immediately made him feel ill. He suddenly felt hot, red and feverish, and asked us to rush back to the clinic." 

When Araya went, the secret police were waiting to arrest him. He was taken to Santiago's National Stadium, where thousands of suspected supporters of the overthrown government were being held and tortured. While there, he heard the news that Neruda had died, just a few hours after the injection.

Araya said he was always convinced that Neruda had been murdered, but did not dare to say anything until 1990, when Chile returned to democracy. At that time no-one seemed to believe him. Mrs Neruda had died by then, and while her memoirs indicate that "Pablo was not ready to die yet", there is nothing conclusive.

(...)

________________________________

Pablo Neruda is one of the great Spanish language writers of the 20th century and surely the most notable Chilean poet ever. 

Virginian prisoners gain class consciousness, and begin a hunger strike for their rights

From Kasama:

We Prisoners at Red Onion State Prison demand! 

Posted by Mike E on May 22, 2012

Supporters of the prisoners deliver their
10 Demands to the Virginia prison authorities.

Prisoners say:

“Regardless of sexual preference, gang affiliation, race and religion, there are only two classes at this prison: the oppressor and the oppressed. We the oppressed are coming together. We’re considered rival gang members, but now we’re coming together as revolutionaries. We’re tired of being treated like animals.”

After attempts to air their grievances through the internal processes of Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison were ignored, prisoners have begun a hunger strike to protest the deplorable conditions in the prison and ongoing abuses by prison staff.

The prisoners have laid out a set of demands which call for an end to indefinite segregation, clean living conditions, healthy, cooked meals, access to medical care, cleaning materials and personal hygiene products, and a clear and transparent process for complaints. They also demand that third-party observers be given access to document prison conditions and that prisoners be informed of the duration and reason for solitary detention.

More can be learned at  the Virginia prison strike blog. To sign a petition of support go here.

10 Demands of the Red Onion State Prison hunger strikers

We (Prisoners at Red Onion State Prison) demand the right to an adequate standard of living while in the custody of the state!

1. We demand fully cooked food, and access to a better quality of fresh fruit and vegetables.  In addition, we demand increased portions on our trays, which allows us to meet our basic nutritional needs as defined by VDOC regulations.

2. We demand that every prisoner at ROSP have unrestricted access to complaint and grievance forms and other paperwork we may request.

3. We demand better communication between prisoners and higher- ranking guards. Presently higher-ranking guards invariably take the lower-ranking guards’ side in disputes between guards and prisoners, forcing the prisoner to act out in order to be heard. We demand that higher- ranking guards take prisoner complaints and grievances into consideration without prejudice.

4. We demand an end to torture in the form of indefinite segregation through the implementation of a fair and transparent process whereby prisoners can earn the right to be released from segregation. We demand that prison officials completely adhere to the security point system, insuring that prisoners are transferred to institutions that correspond with their particular security level.

5. We demand the right to an adequate standard of living, including access to quality materials that we may use to clean our own cells.  Presently, we are forced to clean our entire cell, including the inside of our toilets, with a single sponge and our bare hands.  This is unsanitary and promotes the spread of disease-carrying bacteria.

6. We demand the right to have 3rd party neutral observers visit and document the condition of the prisons to ensure an end to the corruption amongst prison officials and widespread human rights abuses of prisoners. Internal Affairs and Prison Administrator’s monitoring of prison conditions have not alleviated the dangerous circumstances we are living under while in custody of the state which include, but are not limited to: the threat of undue physical aggression by guards, sexual abuse and retaliatory measures, which violate prison policies and our human rights.

7. We demand to be informed of any and all changes to VDOC/IOP policies as soon as these changes are made.

8.  We demand the right to adequate medical care. Our right to medical care is guaranteed under the eight amendment of the constitution, and thus the deliberate indifference of prison officials to our medical needs constitutes a violation of our constitutional rights.  In particular, the toothpaste we are forced to purchase in the prison is a danger to our dental health and causes widespread gum disease and associated illnesses.

9.  We demand our right as enumerated through VDOC policy, to a monthly haircut. Presently, we have been denied haircuts for nearly three months.  We also demand to have our razors changed out on a weekly basis. The current practice of changing out the razors every three weeks leaves prisoners exposed to the risk of dangerous infections and injury.

10. We demand that there be no reprisals for any of the participants in the Hunger Strike. We are simply organizing in the interest of more humane living conditions.

Quebec approves fascist law against 14-week-long student strike

The Parliament of Quebec, dominated by the Liberal Party (conservative and unionist) approved this past week (May 18th) a law that:

• Forbids any crowd near a university
• Forbids any demonstration if the organizers do not notify police with at least 8 hours advise
• Brutal fines against organizers of demonstrations that obstruct the normal working of universities

The student strike is fighting against an attempt to more than double the fees from c. $1780 to $4000.

Source: Disidente del Capitalismo[es], who cites other sources also in Spanish.

Update: also at Al Jazeera.

Some 200,000 marched against this fascist law and in demand for the resignation of Charest, who is decried as a tyrant.

Japanese People rebel against the criminal idiocy of their government, block radioactive debris scatter, two arrested

As you may know (or not because the lack of information on the worst environmental disaster ever is incredible), the corporative Japanese government, essentially controlled by big dumb companies like TEPCO, is going on criminal rampage, scattering the radioactive debris from Fukushima all around the country (and maybe Marianas islands, a US colony). 

It makes no sense, I know, but that is what they are doing stubbornly, bribing municipal governments so they accept radioactive debris for land-fillings (Tokyo) or incineration (many others). Apparently the twisted logic behind may be that they aim to "decontaminate" as much as possible the Fukushima area so vast areas of the countries are not evacuated. But it's all nonsense because they are just helping to spread the contamination all around, even to areas that should be relatively safe like the South or the Ryukyu islands. 

Finally some people in Kytakyushu have attempted to block the trucks carrying the first load of radio-contamination from the North, even getting their bodies under some of the 22 trucks:

Eventually, eight hours later, police removed them and accused two men of "attack" (Ex-SKF explains that may well mean that they merely touched the police agents - in my country you don't even need to do that: they declare so and it's legal "truth"). These two men have been arrested.

Sources: Ex-SKF (link 1, link 2), Fukushima Diary. 

In other Fukushima-related developments...

One of the consequences of exposure to radiation is increased risk of sudden heart attack, often leading to death. Fukushima Diary shows how, since April 2011, infant mortality because of heart attacks has grown abnormally, effectively doubling:

Other radiation-related diseases, like cancer, have also increased similarly. But then they will say that radiation is "harmless". 

Iori Mochizuki also discusses, following workers' tweets, how Fukushima I reactors have serious architectural stability issues, maybe because of the continuous injection of seawater to prevent further criticalities. 

Meanwhile EneNews reports of the arrest of a Yakuza ringleader who was involved in blackmailing people to be sent to work and die at Fukushima Daichi.

Thousands protest against education cuts in Pamplona

Thousands demonstrated yesterday in Iruñea (Pamplona) to demand the chartered government of Navarre not to implement the education cuts dictated by Madrid and Brussels.

Source: Ateak Ireki[es].

Killing immigrants in Spain is cheap: policemen who killed a Nigerian while deporting get away with a €600 fine. Outrageous!

Two police agents who irregularly gagged a Nigerian immigrant with duck tape in 2007 while in deportation transit, who died as result, got away at court with a ridiculous fine of €600. 

The agreement between the state attorney and the other state workers (police agents) was facilitated by some other state workers (forsenic experts), who claimed that the gagging was not the direct cause of the death but that it was caused by stress and lack of oxygen. 

I really can't imagine how being gagged with duck tape can't cause stress and lack of oxygen... but guess that, following that kind of logic, they can shoot someone and claim that the bullet (never mind the hand pulling the trigger) was not the direct cause of death but a complex set of factors like a hole in the head and heavy brain spill. 

Sadly it is not any joke: a person was killed and the culprits have got away easily. They will probably kill again and that time it may be you... or me.

Ref. Levante[es].

More infos on Chicago anti-NATO protests

From Contra Info:

Illinois, USA: Arrests of anarchists during the 2012 NATO Chicago summit

In the context of the 2012 NATO Chicago summit, on 20th and 21st May of 2012, many counter-protesters were detained during anti-NATO protest marches. Several anarchists were arrested ‘preemptively’. They were accused of scheduling and preparing militant actions against the summit meeting of the world’s largest warmonger. There are yet no reliable information from friends and comrades who were actually there, but due to the need of dissemination of some facts about the arrests, here follows a first summary by ABC Berlin.

Late on Wednesday evening of the 16th of May, the cops stormed a house in the neighborhood of Bridgeport in Chicago, without showing an arrest warrant or search warrant, and arrested nine people. Six were released without charges on Friday. However, three were remanded in custody, and are now being subject to investigation and threatened with charges of ‘conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism, and possession of explosives or explosive or incendiary devices.’ They are accused of having planned to attack with Molotov cocktails four cops’ stations, the local campaign headquarters of US president Obama, the residence of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and other targets in the city. All three were described by the prosecution authorities as self-proclaimed anarchists, having travelled together from Florida several weeks before the scheduled anti-NATO protests in Chicago. During the police raid in the Bridgeport house, a device was confiscated by the cops, who now claim that this was used to make Molotov cocktails; nevertheless, according to the residents, this was simply a kit for making beer at home. A bail bond of 5 million US dollars cash was set for each defendant (a total amount of 1.5 million).

Meanwhile, there were reports about two persons who have turned up earlier this month in Chicago and soon became involved in the preparations against the NATO summit. Since the arrests, both are gone from the city, so there has been speculation that they were police informants. The bourgeois Press has circulated that the cops had been informed weeks ago that arson attacks against the State and the Capital were planned for the anti-NATO protests.

On Thursday, two more people were arrested, accused of having planned actions with Molotov cocktails. These two are also held in custody.

You can protest about this set-ups with rallies and direct actions at embassies or consulates of the NATO member States, namely United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Via La Haine[es], we get this Venezuela TV video with narration in Spanish but with diversity of video-images from the protests in Chicago:

In a related news item, it has been known that NATO has decided to pull off Afghanistan next year, before each member would evacuate on their own. It is unclear if the puppet regime will be able to stand on their own.

Sahrawi prisoner of conscience begins hunger strike against prison abuses

Hassanna Jalal, Sahrawi political prisoner, began on Saturday a hunger strike in Tarudanat Prison in response to the physical abuse and provocations suffered, culminating in the prison guards taking all his possessions (breaching law 23/98 which regulate basic prisoners' rights - in theory) .

Jalal was sentenced to four years of prison for taking part in peaceful demonstrations for the independence of West Sahara in 2008. He recently suffered abdominal surgery and went through two other political fasts, so his relatives are worried about the dangers to his health and even his life as he goes through this new hunger strike.

Source: Gara[es].

Massive anti-NATO demos and some 45 people arrested in Chicago tonight

I know of no figures but certainly the demo was big:

Source: Kasama, more photos at link

Upon the end of the demo, people rejected police threats to disperse and insisted in marching towards the World Imperial Government (NATO summit) to tell them some ugly truths. Police then attacked the demonstrators and arrested some 45 people (source: Sare Antifaxista[es], includes video).

Updates:

Russia Today reports that Anonymous took down Chicago city and Chicago police sites yesterday in protest against NATO summit. (And the fact that we think it's alright is a major crisis of legitimacy for the whole Imperial system, which seems to exist on a bubble with an every-day thinner sociological support base).

Indymedia reports on the illegal home raid of yesterday, which ended with several people arrested as "terrorists" (with no apparent reason).

It also has another report on yesterday's large demonstration.

Draw Muhammad Day 2012

EDMD was yesterday in fact but I did not notice until today, thanks to The Blasphemer's Bible (a comic). 

Some people in the so-called Left seem to think that being tolerant and anti-racist means to accept all exotic superstitions, bigotry and intolerance, just because these are exotic and hence being against them could count as xenophobic. 

I say that we should consider all religions for what they are and in most cases that means patriarchal oppression of women, children and men as well and ideological brainwashing in favor of the established powers (or an alternative power that is even worse). Hence Islam deserves no more mercy than Christianity or Judaism (or surely others) and must be criticized fiercely like any other dogma that serves to oppress humankind.

Furthermore, I understand that Christianity and Islam (and Mormonism and Baha'i and Sikhism...) are nothing but offshoots of Judaism, of which modern Rabbinic Judaism is also one, even if it retains a somewhat more direct identification with the original trunk religion of Iron Age Palestinians. Hence for me they are all the same religion and the same junk and deserve no respect, although all the tolerance, as long as they don't interfere with the normal development of a secular society, i.e. as long as they accept that spirituality and religion are personal, private matters and that society is for all purposes atheist: having no god. 

So here is my stick figure version of Muhammad and his doctrine:

Happy Draw Mohammed Day, which was yesterday.

Where is my fatwa?!

___________________________

Notes: 

Drawing Muhammad (Islam):

Back in the day drawing Muhammad was a common sight and even today some images of the Muslim prophet are preserved. The iconoclasm of modern Islam is not original but evolved and certainly it is not in the Quran (you can be Muslim and draw Muhammad: it's not haram - no sin).

Muhammad (right), Abraham, Jesus and other (Neo-)Judaistic holy men (Muslim miniature)

Women's dress:

The Quran reads: "that they should draw their khimār over their bosoms". Covering the head or face is not a Muslim commandment, at least as Muhammad proclaimed it. Actually head-to-toe covering dresses are a Hellenistic "heathen" custom adopted by some Muslims later on, it has as little relation to Muhammad's concept of Islam as the crescent icon (which is a Pagan Turkish one in fact).

Fear God:
Years ago, I began reading the Quran (an authorized English version) and it was all "fear God", once and again. I quit after the 5th chapter out of boredom and, admittedly, a bit scared of such a doctrine of fear.

Armpits:

The white armpits anecdote is part of the Muslim imagery of Muhammed and seems based on some early account. I find it so freaky that I had to include it. 

Idolatry:

I find quite ironic that Muslims claim to have no idols yet they prostrate towards a black rock which used to be an idol before Muhammad. Even more ironic is how they treat their holy book as if it was a revered idol. But the most unbearable of all idolatries, shared by all revealed religions, is their idolatry of words: they take the "holy word" as an idol instead of understanding that God (if it has to exist) is everything and not just that or that other thing, word or even idea. 

From a Pantheistic perspective, all those sectarian beliefs are nothing but petty idolatry. In what regards to me, you can worship a pile of manure and prostrate towards it, it's as godly as anything else (not more, not less) but making an issue of your particular preferential iconography, be it plastic, ritual, verbal or whatever else, is just wrong.