Was there a military coup attempt in India on January 16-17?

Some days ago the Indian Express reported of the following anomalous military maneuvers around Delhi, never notified to the Ministry of Defense, as would be normative. These events happened however almost three months ago, on January 16-17th but their relevance was not discussed publicly until now:

What Happened

• On Jan 16, an entire unit of mechanised infantry based in Hisar with its fighting vehicles began moving towards Delhi. It parked near Najafgarh
• Sizeable section of the Agra-based 50 Para Brigade also moved to near Palam
• Both were stopped and ordered to be moved back

What Army says

• These were exercises to check effectiveness in fog
• Troops moved towards Delhi, not outward, westward since Pakistan hadn’t been notified
• The Paras were being moved to check out possibility of their “marrying” with the C-130s in Hindon

Unanswered questions

• Why wasn’t Ministry of Defence notified?
• Did the units have to come so far towards Delhi?
• Why was the IAF not informed? 

I made a map of the events (based on Wikimedia's):

The maneuvers were not authorized (pretext: routine training). 

The likelihood of an actual coup is however dismissed by many: India is too big and any such attempt not having nearly everyone on board would surely just lead to a civil war. However a show of force is more than likely. 

But what could be the cause? Oddly enough a silly administrative dispute on the exact age of General V.K. Singh, commander of the Eastern Army (Kolkatta), had degenerated apparently in a serious row on the readiness of the Indian military to face a potential war (v. ATOL). 

In general Indian media dismiss the coup theory but any neutral observer can't but raise an eyebrow... or both. You normally don't do large scale military maneuvers in the outskirts of the capital without notifying the government, do you? 

I'd dare say one thing however: any such military interference in politics, can only result, the same as in Mali, in severe dislodgement of the Indian state, with separatist territories rushing to segregate and the Maoist guerrilla only being fortified as result.

Basque victim of police brutality paid €170,000 after European Human Rights Court ruling

You can't get justice in Spanish tribunals but, now and then at least, you get it from the European ones (after two decades of delay however). The Strassbourg Court ruled in favor of Mikel Iribarren, a Navarrese victim of police brutality in 1991, forcing the Spanish state to pay him €170,000 as compensation.

Mikel Iribarren was hit with a gas canister shot directly against his face in 1991, the sequels have been important, losing part of the brain, mobility in the left body for long and bearing permanent scars in the face.

Video interview (in Spanish) with Mikel Iribarren:

Source[es]: Sare Antifaxista.

Japan, with US help, was getting ready to forge huge nuclear arsenal

... and also for War

Since the Reagan presidency the USA, as well as Great Britain and Canada, helped Japan to circumvent legality in order to mass up enough plutonium to develop a nuclear arsenal bigger than those of China, India and Pakistan combined.

The whole nuclear energy program, now in dire straits and threatening the very viability of the country as such, was in fact a gigantic cover up intended to hide the nuclear weapons program, something that Japan secretly ambitioned since WWII.

The use of MOX (mixed plutonium-uranium fuel) was the perfect excuse for this accumulation of plutonium, which would allow Japan to develop nuclear weapons in no time would the need arise. It was also a convenient way for other nuclear states such as France to get rid of their nuclear wast, which would be "recycled" in Japan and not anymore be a problem at home.

A long detailed article on this process, culminating in the Fukushima catastrophe, is available at the National Security News Service (found via EneNews).

'Great Wall' to be built to contain the worst of Fukushima

July 2011 snapshot of this regularly updated radiation map

Fukushima Diary mentions today that a 88km long wall will be built around the worst damaged area near Fukushima Daiichi.

Finally the Japanese Government seems to have accepted that the severity of the disaster requires evacuations (a year too late but better late than never) and is proposing the following zoning:

>50mSv/year zone (~5.7 μSv/hr) - No entry zone, walled

20-50mSv/year zone - No living zone

~20mSv/year (~2.3 μSv/hr) zone - Advisory evacuation area

That means that much of the reddish area in the map would become inaccessible, however most of Fukushima city, Koriyama and the other cities along the Tohoku highway would only fall in the advisory evacuation area probably.

For more detailed maps see this September 2011 entry.

The max. recommended exposure for civilians (US standards) is anyhow 1 mSv/year. Background radiation can be slightly higher in some areas however. 20mSv/year is the max exposure theoretically allowed for nuclear workers. 

However the local authorities, specially the once populous Minamisoma city, just outside Fukushima Daiichi NPP, are reluctant to evacuate in most cases, giving the central government a pretext to delay all these measures.

Greece: police agents to be rented out to private hirers for as little as 20 euros/hr

The Greek state will not cut down its expenditures in military nor police forces, after all that is what a state is ultimately: armed forces. 

But they will rent them to private actors as mercenary forces and escorts for as little as €20 per hour for a motorcycle escort, €30 for a police agent (with unclear role) and €40 for a car escort. €200 will be the hourly cost of a patrol boat and €1500 for a helicopter.

According to the Greek tyranny (where are the promised April elections?) this is meant to defuse the accusations of the state favoring the elite so services that were in the past provided free of charge such as escorts will now be paid for. But you tell me how a common citizen, for example a gender violence victim, may be able to afford anything like that with today's Greek salaries! The result can only be an even greater elitism of the police forces and of whom they protect. 

The mercenariness of police forces, previously unspoken and implicit, has only been made explicit with this measure and can only lead to the total disintegration of the Greek state.

Source: Digital Journal (and several others).

Basque Country: Iñigo Cabacas dies of injuries caused by police unjustified violence against civilians

I had sadly to mention these last days the criminal and irrational police aggression against civilian multitudes that caused the head of Iñigo Cabacas Liceranzu (pictured) to explode because of a rubber bullet shot at short distance. 

It could have be anyone else: the irrational violence displayed by police corps authorized de facto to do as they please under their sky mask, knowing that neither tribunals nor even most of the media, all controlled by the same bourgeois mafioso gang of petty dictators, will do anything about it, knowing that whoever raises their voice for human rights and against police brutality will be dismissed as suspect of terrorism, if not directly arrested, tortured, mock-judged and jailed for a decade or two. 

It could have been anyone else in that corralled crowd but it was Iñigo. They blew his head with a rubber bullet shot and he has been fighting for his life since then. 

But not anymore: today Iñigo Cabacas died.

Neither the agent who shot, nor the police officer who directed the ill-fated operation nor the Councilor of Interior are before the judge. In fact, excepting the latter, the identity of these criminals is unknown: they hide behind the sky masks that are part of the uniform of this police corps designed to spread terror among the citizenry.

Ertzaintza dissolution now!

A homage has been called today at 19:00 where he was injured, in María Díaz de Haro street.

Sources[es]: Gara, Sare Antifaxista, Borroka garaia da!


Update: narration of a witness' testimony appeared in social networks:

I witnessed what happened on Thursday. After the football match I agreed to meet my brother and girlfriend to have a drink at the Kirruli, as we use to, and just after arrival we saw two people, both wearing Athletic shirts, wrestling each other. People nagged at them as it was time of celebration and nothing else happened. We continued discussing the match, laughing... and some 5-10 minutes later (I think) some four vans of sepoys [slang for Basque police forces], masked as a matter of course, and with the guns readied. People began crying and whistling against them because nobody understood what they were doing there, much less with that attitude. And they just began shooting indiscriminately (three of them specifically).

It must be said that the area where all happened is a narrow street and that they were shooting at head level from some 20-30 meters. People scattered around and soon (some 5 minutes later) we heard a girl asking for an ambulance. I and my brother went there and saw a person bleeding from the head. I and someone else run towards them (the black ones [the anti-riot police]) asking for an ambulance and one said "it will come". 

Not knowing what else to do we went back to the place where the body was, together with 6-7 other people, and suddenly I noticed how I was beaten with a baton on the arm and the back (from behind, while squatting). Raging I told them: "look what you have done, you have killed him" and one of them replied "that I must see myself" and hit me twice again and sent me away. The ambulance had not yet arrived, not a siren could be heard either. Besides, the police vans impeded the access of any vehicle.

The Police claims that they attended a call saying that someone was injured. If so, where was the ambulance? Why four vans full of sepoys arrived instead? Why masked armed men descended from them if they had to succor a person? How could have we been partying with a person in such a state?

From here I ask the murderer or murderers to show their faces, that their wives/husbands, sons/daughters, friends know that they have a monster, an amoral person without conscience and a happy trigger at home. I ask the responsible people (all politicians without exception) to condemn the incident and that justice be made. I ask that they take the weapons and the masks from them and that a morality test be made before they can join this shit of insecurity corps we have. Ask a why and, even if it is useless, a compensation. I want to say that I am ready to declare this wherever is needed. My telephone number is XXXXXXX.

Go Iñigo!

Update (Apr 10): Roughly a thousand people massed in and around the small plaza where Iñigo was deadly injured to pay him a small homage and show our outrage with our silence and applauses.

The killing, sadly not totally unexpected as the Basque Police has grown more and more arrogant and brutal in their behavior, has caused massive outrage. While the resignation of the Councilor of Interior of the imposed undemocratic government, R. Ares, is being demanded by many, this really does not solve the problem of a police force that is so extremely violent and inhuman and should be dissolved.

'Shi'ites massacred in Pakistan' (Random Pottins)

WHAT appears to have been a major sectarian massacre in Pakistan-controlled territory seems to have escaped the attention of Western media, or perhaps the Pakistani authorities succeeded in keeping reporters away. But as efforts are made to rescue soldiers trapped by an avalanche in Kashmir, there are reports suggesting the same number of people may have been killed by an organised mob not that far away.

This is from an opposition blog which says it wants to build "a progressive, inclusive and democratic Pakistan":

"On 3 April-2012, at least 100 Shia Muslims were killed and over 250 abducted in Chilas area of Gilgit-Baltistan when a mob of 2000 Deobandi-Jihadi militants of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaast) stopped several buses on the Karakoram Highway near Chilas, pulled out the passengers, checked their identity documents and physical marks (Shia men usually have self flagellation marks on their back due to Muharram mourning rituals), segregated Shia Muslims killing at least 100 of them and abducting another 250".

... full story at Random Pottins.

Brown Shirts patrolling the streets of Florida

If the murder of Trayvon Martin (and the murderer getting away through a legal loophole) was not enough abuse, now Nazis of the National Socialist Movement (NSM-USA) are using the scandal caused by this murder and the legal pretext offered by the cover-up to unleash their militias in the streets of Sandford, Florida. 

It is not clear at the moment if the patrols are for real or just a bravado of the Nazi headquarters in Detroit but what is clear is that the Nazis are attempting to present themselves as a "civil rights group" and using all kind of vigilante legal loopholes to foster their presence in the streets. 

Similarly they have been patrolling the US-Mexican border with automatic weapons apt for war and murder. 

The only appropriate answer against the Nazis is a zero tolerance policy. There's absolutely no reason to tolerate even minimally the intolerant and racist. Zero tolerance is the only policy that works with Nazis and all kind of Fascists.

Sources: Miami New Times, New York Post, News One.

Spain's new wastes: giving public money to military businessmen because they are friends of the minister

Minister Pedro Morenés

There is no money for pensions, no money for healthcare, no money for public housing, no money for culture and no money for unemployment subsidies... but the neofascist rulers of Spain have enough taxpayer money to give it to their capitalist friends at whim it seems. 

The former owners of Instalaza SA, a weapons company specialized in the construction of cluster bombs, will be paid an 'indemnity' for the UN decission to ban such particularly harmful weapons in 2010. The amount to be gifted to these white gloved thieves is €40 million.

Incidentally the current Minister of Defense, Pedro Morenés, was councilor of this munitions company between 2005 and 2007, later becoming representative until late 2011, when he resigned in order to become minister.

Besides working for Instalaza, this thief of Morenés worked in other companies of the Military-Industrial Complex: MBDA missile systems (formerly EADS and others), the private security company Segur Ibérica, military building subcontractor Aritex. He was also Secretary of State (viceminister) for Defense and Security with the Aznar government that invaded Iraq without proper war declaration or reason whatsoever and presides a capitalist association (Círculo de Empresarios).

Source: Tercera Información[es].

Morocco detains and tortures two teenagers in occupied El Aaiun

Two minors, Uadih Sal-lami and Mehdi Baluzza were arrested without charges and tortured by the Moroccan occupation forces in West Sahara, reports Tercera Información[es].

Sal-lami (pictured) has been the one most badly hurt by the occupation forces, who damaged his arm and leg, as well as the mouth.

The agression is part of racist raid in a neighborhood near a newly built station of the occupation forces.

Witness narration of what happened when police broke the head of Iñigo Cabacas with a rubber bullet

It could have been anyone. But it was Iñigo Cabacas (pictured), who is struggling between life and death at hospital with most serious head injuries.

Some friends, witnesses and co-victims of the brutal police aggression tell the story:

We were in a zone of María Díaz de Haro street, several Ertzaintza vans arrived, an important deployment. Crowded and where there is no way to run because there is only one exit which is some sort of tunnel. Several of us told them that nothing happened but they moved us apart and began shooting rubber bullets. People tried to run away through there [the tunnel] but, sure, a jam was formed. 

Meanwhile the police bosses are trying to criminalize the victim and pretend that the agents were received with bottle-throwing to somehow justify their murderous irrational bully behavior. 

Three other people were arrested, allegedly for throwing objects against police or ignoring a police line. 

Sources[es]: Sare Antifaxista, Gara.

See also for background: One person severely injured by police after fascist-triggered incidents in the Athletic-Schalke football match.

EU will ban rubber bullets by the end of the year, mystery alternatives being tested by Spanish cops

The EU is set to ban rubber bullets by the end of the year. This kind of ammunition has been proven too deadly and dangerous (specially as agents who abuse them are never punished) and the European Commission has decided to abolish them by means of a directive (= Euro-law). 

Right now only Spain and Portugal allow them, while France has been testing a new 'non-lethal' weapon, the Swiss-produced GL-06, whose 40mm projectile does not bounce but can be equally dangerous, having also caused serious injuries already. 

Just this week one person was critically injured (and may still die) by a rubber bullet shot in this city. Such 'accidents' are sadly way too common. 

Sources[es]: Stop Pelotas de Goma!, Sare Antifaxista.

Cuban exile kills himself after subsidy retrieved

Albert Santiago du Bouchet Hernández, a Cuban exile who was living from subsidies from the Spanish regime and saw them suppressed with the recent draconian cuts killed himself in Canary Islands after being faced with the harsh reality of Capitalism. 

Another exile, Juan Herrera Costa, declared months ago that he was willing to return to Cuba since he was being deprived, just like anyone else in this death camp of the European Union, of means of subsistence under the Capitalist system. 

That would not have happened to them in Cuba, where every citizen is guaranteed the basics, including home, food and healthcare. However, as Disidente del Capitalismo points out, these people were, it seems, hoping to live like rock stars out of their status of "Cuban dissidents". The reality is very different: they have to survive as any worker and that's anything but easy.

As La Polla Records sang already in the 1980s:

Come jumping over the Berlin Wall,

come to this free world smiling,

soon you will see with your tired eyes, 

our blessed freedom!

The truth: I do not know

what you come here for.

The truth I will tell you:

there's nowhere to run to!

In this paradise life sucks

what's wrong with you, kid, are you crying?

When are you going to find out

that the Wall is a lie!

Source: Disidente del Capitalismo, various TV channels.

Inquisition times again: will be executed for confessing under torture

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of being the master mind of the 9-11 attacks (that were obviously the work of the US secret services) faces death penalty with the only evidence of his self-inculpation under torture. 

Mohammed was water-boarded (nearly drowned) not less than 183 times at the concentration camp of Guantanamo Bay. That was how the Inquisition got all kind of self-inculpations of witchcraft and what not: people eventually see death as a reasonably good alternative when you torture them. 

The mainstream imperial media is ignoring how the confession was forced on this man, this scapegoat for the crimes of the Bush administration.

Source: Ah, Mephistophelis!

Polar bears may suffer radiation poisoning in Beaufort Sea (American Arctic)

Some 27% (9/33) of polar bears captured by researchers in Beaufort Sea suffer symptoms of a mysterious illness that fits perfectly with radiation poisoning such as hair loss.

These same symptoms have been found in seals and walruses since months ago further south in the Pacific coasts of Alaska. 

A virus has been discarded as cause. It's probable that the bears have been poisoned from eating walruses and seals who were contaminated by Fukushima radiation near Alaska or Chukotka.

Sources: Energy News, quoting Alaska Public, ABC and USGS.

'Our name is Resistance' - Letter of the daughter of Dimitris Christoulas

My father’s handwritten note left no room for misinterpretation. He has been a leftish activist throughout his life, a selfless visionary.

This specific act of his ending is a conscious political act, entirely consistent with his beliefs and actions during his lifetime. In our country, Greece, they are killing the self-evident.

For some, for “the stubborn children of the chimera”, in such a situation, suicide seems to be the obvious act, not as a getaway, but as an awakening scream.

For this reason, it (the suicide) takes on another meaning, the meaning of that song we first sang together, at the concert of our beloved Mikis (Theodorakis), in 1975, the song we always sang at our own celebrations and for our own dead… Go to sleep father and I am heading to my brothers and sisters with your voice.

This is the only thing you were dreaming for the youth and I think you’ve accomplished it. At the site where you left, there is a note of a youth: “The name of the dead today is Democracy… But it’s 11 million of us that are still alive and our name is Resistance”.

Source: downloadable text at TwitDoc, via SA[es].

France and the African Union oppose Azawad's independence

New state: Azawad

The actors are different but the reasons are the same: both France (and its satellite Spain) and the artificial post-colonial African states fear that the status quo of these unnatural states imposed on the reality of ethnicities and often also on the true will of the affected peoples will spread like an epidemic of sorts causing the collapse of the old world order. 

There are many other cases I can think of but this problem specially affects Southwestern Europe, which is still to enjoy the benefits of national self-determination as Central and Eastern Europe and even Ireland could achieve in the 20th century, and Africa, where states are in most cases nothing but capriciously drawn colonial administrative divisions.

North Africa faces the issue of the Berber minorities, demanding independence or at least greater autonomy in Algeria and Morocco specially, where they are more numerous, but the situation is totally dramatic south of the Sahara, where almost not a single polity approaches the modern concept of nation-state.

This issue has triggered long and/or bloody separatist wars by areas and ethnicities which find themselves disadvantaged in the states assigned, often dividing them in several arbitrary portions. Some of the most notable secessionist struggles have been:

• Casamance (vs. Senegal)
• Biafra (vs. Nigeria)
• Katanga (vs. Congo/Zaire)
• South Sudan (vs. Sudan, suceeded)
• Darfur (vs. Sudan)
• Eritrea (vs. Ethiopia, succeeded)
• Somalis in Ethiopia (vs. Ethiopia)
• Tuaregs (vs. Mali, Niger and Algeria)

There are also other cases  in which a territory has been more or less arbitrarily assigned to a neighboring country against the will of the people, even if the case of distinct ethnicity is not so clear. This is the case of West Sahara, whose military annexation to Morocco is mostly rejected, and of Somaliland, whose incorporation to Somalia was challenged more recently and has declared its independence unilaterally as well. 

And the dissatisfaction with the post-colonial political arrangements does not just manifest in secessionism and the occasional religious conflict but also in civil wars and other internal conflicts, which often run across ethnic lines. 

In fact it is scientifically demonstrated that ethnicities which have been divided as result of border-drawing suffer the most from all kind of conflicts, at least in Africa (though I'd dare say this applies to all). 

In brief: the Jacobin neocolonial regimes organized by the former colonial power, France, in the Francophonie and in general all the regimes produced by the scramble of Africa 130 years ago (and the unfinished decolonization of 50-60 years ago), associated in the African Union, fight and will fight by all means at their reach against the right of self-determination of the peoples in Africa as in Europe. 

However reality is gradually overriding their Jacobin dictates. Eventually, it is inevitable that the artificial borders are redrawn by the peoples themselves.

One person severely injured by police after fascist-triggered incidents in the Athletic-Schalke football match

Nazi drunkards causing trouble

An unnamed man, 28, was very severely injured yesterday in Bilbao when the western Basque Police Corps, Ertzaintza, shot a rubber bullet to his head. 

According to the medical report the victim remains in the Intensive Care Unit of Basurto Hospital with cranial fracture caused by burst, with severe brain injuries. He was reanimated with sedatives and is kept with mechanical ventilation. His forecast is most severe.

Friends of the victim are asking[es] for witnesses and/or any evidence such as a video of the attack. 

The Nazi hooligans of the Schalke-04, a German football team, ignited clashes in the stadium when they were placed just above local supporters in a clear case of security mishandling. The clashes later had offshoots in the streets where two people were arrested for allegedly throwing bottles against masked riot police agents. 

Source[es]: Sare Antifaxista (link 1, link 2, link 3).

Greece: anarchist prisoners initiate hunger strike

The four anarchist prisoners consider themselves to be a political scapegoat for the legitimate anger of the Greek People against the Capitalist regime. They demand the lifting of the maximum security regime imposed to them before trial, as well as the release of one of them Stella Antoniou, on health grounds. 

Giorgos Karagiannidis, Alexandros Mitroussias and Kostas Sakkas began their hunger strike yesterday, while Stella Antoniou will join them in a week because of her delicate health. 

A demo has been called for today at Syntagma Square in solidarity with them. However there are other calls for anti-austerity demos in that same place at the same time. 

Solidarity graffiti from Murcia, Spain

Police beating detainees to near death

An unnamed Cretan young man had to be urgently flown to Athens for treatment after masked police agents detained and beat him to near death. He was intervened surgically in lung and pancreas for severe injuries. The victim was enjoying a party night when he got arbitrarily detained without any charge.

Sources: Contra Info, Occupied London-FTGS.

Demo at Japanese PM's official residence against re-starting of nuclear plants

Fukushima Diary reports of a rather numerous demonstration (at least for Japanese standards) right now at the residence of the Prime Minister against re-starting nuclear power plants. Today only one nuclear reactor is producing in all Japan and behold: lights are still on!

There is a live UStream of the protest.

Atarrabia in full dresses with Basque colors

The Spanish Nationalist legal imposition against the sovereign decisions by the Navarrese town of Atarrabia showing the Basque banner or not showing any banner at all (their second decision after the first was declared illegal) has backfired. Now every home in this small suburb of Pamplona, famous for being the hometown of one of the best cyclist from all times, Miguel Indurain, bears the Basque colors as shown in the image. 

Why don't you mind your own business, you fascist imperialist Spaniards, and leave us alone?! 800 years is more than enough!

Source: Sare Antifaxista[es].

Class War again in the streets of Greece after two desperate people killed themselves

The most striking case was that of Dimitris Christoulas who shot himself dead at the age of 75 in Syntagma Square. His denunciation of the traitor government who stole his pension, duly paid through a life of hard work, to pay the banksters in France, Germany and elsewhere, and foresight of the armed uprising of the Greek youth have really touched the people in Greece and, I'd dare say, of all Europe and the World. 

As Bertolt Brecht memorably wrote:

There are many ways to kill:
they can stab a knife in your guts,
take away your bread,
not to cure you from an illness,
put you in a miserable home,
torture you to death 
by means of work,
take you to war, etcetera.
Only some of these are 
prohibited in our city.

Yesterday in Euronews we could listen to a woman explaining that she is in the same desperate situation, after her pension of some €400 per month (extremely low income!) was cut radically to a mere €180 (= $235).

The blame of these deaths therefore lays in the Quisling Papademos government but also in the bourgeois dictatorship of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the overall imperial organization of NATO, neither of which is democratic at all.

And I say deaths, plural, because another man, aged 38, killed himself[es] yesterday in Ierapetra as he saw himself unable to feed his children anymore. 

Dimitris made his last contribution to Greece with his death, which was not just a silent one but a cry of anger and a rally call fro revolution:

The Tsolakoglou* [Quisling] occupation government literally nullified my ability to survive on a decent pension, for which I had already paid (without government aid) for 35 years.

I am of an age that prevents me from offering a decent individual response (without of course ruling out the possibility of being the second person to take arms, should one person decide to do so), I find no solution other than a dignified end, before resorting to going through garbage in order to cover my nutritional needs.

One day, I believe, the youth with no future will take up arms and hang the national traitors at syntagma square, just like the Italians did with Mussolini in 1945 (at Milan’s Piazzale Loreto)

–Dimitris Christoulas, Syntagma, Athens, April 4th, 201

New sovereign state: Azawad

The Tuareg rebels from Northern Mali, who, following the stupidest coup ever (US-supported, of course), captured (or liberated) Timbuktu, Gao and other cities, have stopped military operations and proclaimed the independence of Azawad. 

It is almost the first Berber state since ancient times (with the occasional exception like the Rif Republic in the 1920s), although it also includes other ethnic groups besides Tuaregs, notably Songhai, the also nomadic Fulani, some Arab-speaking Moors and some presence of southern ethnicities like the Bozo and Mandinka.  

Approx. borders of the new state (tan) with mention of some ethnicities

Journalist shot in Bahrain while filming peaceful protest

On March 31st, Ahmed Ismail Hussain was shot down by Bahraini police while filming a protest in Salmabad. 

Hussain was shot in the hip and then taken to hospital where he died.

The demonstration he was covering began about 11:30 pm. Witnesses said he was filming security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.

According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, police cars were followed by two civilian vehicles whose occupants fired live ammunition at the demonstrators.
Other sources reported that the car from which the shots that killed Hussain were fired arrived at the scene after the security forces had left.

 

Reporters Without Borders, which ranked Bahrain as one of the most dangerous states worldwide for journalists in 2011, issued a strong protest. 

Other journalists, like Mazen Mahdi, have been systematically harassed and their materials destroyed.

Source: Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Little stories from IMF-run Greece: 77-year old Dimitris Christoulas commits suicide at Syntagma Square. “One day, I believe, the youth with no future will take up arms” (OL-FTGS)

UPDATE, 20:17 GMT+2 A translation of the suicide note left by Dimitris Christoulas, the 77-year old man who commited suicide at Syntagma Square in Athens earlier today (see below for background to his story).

The Tsolakoglou* [Quisling] occupation government literally nullified my ability to survive on a decent pension, for which I had already paid (without government aid) for 35 years.

I am of an age that prevents me from offering a decent individual response (without of course ruling out the possibility of being the second person to take arms, should one person decide to do so), I find no solution other than a dignified end, before resorting to going through garbage in order to cover my nutritional needs.

One day, I believe, the youth with no future will take up arms and hang the national traitors at syntagma square, just like the Italians did with Mussolini in 1945 (at Milan’s Piazzale Loreto)

–Dimitris Christoulas, Syntagma, Athens, April 4th, 2012

[*Georgios Tsolakoglou was a Greek military officer who became the first Prime Minister of the Greek collaborationist government during the Axis Occupation in 1941-1942.]

Suicide rates have doubled in Greece since the government signed the loan agreement with IMF/EU/ECB. This morning (Apr 4), a 77-year old retired pharmacist shot himself dead at Syntagma, Athens’ central Square (his suicide note is translated above).

 

Yesterday evening, a 38-year old father of two and long-term unemployed, jumped off the roof of his housing block in the town of Ierapetra, Crete.

There are calls circulating for a rally tonight on Syntagma Square at 18:00. One of the calls is accompanied by this flyer:

‘Scumbags, one suicide per day because of you, but the day is coming when the desperate ones will choose to take the law into their own hands: you shall pay’

From Occupied London - From the Greek Streets.

Nazi attack in Granada sends youth to hospital

A citizen of Granada (Andalusia, Spain?) was attacked yesterday night by a gang of Nazis who beat him badly in the face with steel-reinforced boots, disfiguring him terribly. 

The source of this information, Madriz Rebelde[es], also mentions that this is the third murderous attack by Neonazis (other than police thugs) in the state of Spain in the last few weeks. On March 9th s fund-rising party by leftist students in Madrid was attacked by a Nazi gang, later in Manresa (Catalonia), people waiting for a concert was also attacked brutally and one is in coma since then. 

Additionally police corps have been very violent in the occupied countries of the North. I have already mentioned the brutal beating of Xuban Nafarrete in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country) on March 29th but MR also mentions[es] that two Italians were hit by rubber bullets in the protests of that day in Barcelona. Angelo Cilia has lost vision in one eye because of the police aggression, while another unnamed Italian citizen is struggling to save it. 

Arrests of Basque union members for 'throwing paint'

The levels of repression against the working class in the Basque Country have reached yet another level of abuse and arbitrariness: two members of the union LAB (Nationalist Workers' Committees) have been arrested in Navarre for allegedly throwing paint against the capitalist syndicate CEN (Confederation of Businesspeople of Navarre). 

Yesterday was Berta García and today Oskar Cayon who have been arrested for a misdemeanor in a clear attempt to scare them and other revolutionary militants.

Let's not forget that a striking worker Xuban Nafarrete was beaten to near death by masked policemen before a commercial center of Vitoria-Gasteiz and, the following day, members of the same police corps gratuitously attacked a peaceful protest in solidarity with him. 

Not satisfied with this violence the Spanish bourgeois dictatorship continues to attack working class activists in a useless attempt to intimidate.

Source[es]: Gara (link 1, link 2).

Bahrain: Human Rights activist nearing death after 55-days long hunger strike

From Bahrain Center for Human Rights:

GCHR: Urgent appeal to save the life of Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who is facing death

03 April 2012

Open letter to the United Nations/governments of Denmark, US, UK and all other governments and organizations concerned with human rights:

Today, April 3, 2012, human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, the founder of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, enters day 55 of his hunger strike, which he began on February 8, pledging to sustain it until freedom or death. His health has deteriorated severely in a way that threatens his life, while the Bahraini government remains suspiciously silent about the dire situation.

We urge you to use your influence to immediately intervene in order to save the life of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, the internationally well-known and prestigious human rights defender. We call on you to demand from the government in Bahrain his immediate release and transfer to Denmark, where he holds dual Bahraini and Danish citizenship, so he can obtain the medical treatment he needs as a result of his current hunger strike and of the torture he endured while he was under arrest.

The time remains very short to act and we urge you now to take action to save the life of this unique human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, under the shadow of death.

Gulf Centre for Human Rights

Beirut - 03/04/2012

Bombing of Eibar (video) in the 75th anniversary

While the bombing Gernika is most infamous, other Basque towns were also bombed by the European fascists: Durango also by the Nazis but Eibar, a key weapon industry town and defensive bottleneck, was razed by the Italians, who only spared the church.

Video (mute with Spanish subtitles and annoying techno music you may want to turn off):

No tax amnesty for fraudsters in the Basque Country (unlike in Spain)

The ultra-conservative government of Spain proclaimed days ago, amidst draconian budgetary cuts (which do not affect the military, police nor the monarchy) that they would also apply a tax amnesty to fiscal fraudsters if they declared their hidden properties paying an extra 10% only. 

This has not been welcomed by almost anybody and the four Basque chartered governments are already rejecting to apply it. Gipuzkoa and Biscay, ruled by Basque nationalists, have already declared that they won't implement this measure because they find it ethically unacceptable. 

In the regions of Araba and Navarre, ruled in coalition by both Spanish nationalist parties (PP and PSOE) the key is the position of the Spanish socialdemocrats, who have already declared that won't support this pro-fraudster measure, making effectively impossible for the PP to impose their pro-rich doctrines so bluntly. 

Source: Gara[es].

Radioactive cyanobacteria spreading to Tokyo area

Since some time ago we can read reports on the "black substance": some otherwise unremarkable spots of dark grey to black color which are highly radioactive. It seems that these are cyanobacteria who somehow benefit from high radioactivity... unlike us.

They have been found in Kashiwa (Chiba, a suburb of Tokyo), specifically in Mizumoto Park, which had already been reported to be a hotspot. The person who found them suffers from radioactive burns and other symptoms of radiation poisoning (anomalous bruises).

The region of  metropolitan Tokyo hosts some 30-40 million people.

Sources: Fukushima Diary, EneNews.

'Japan's untouchable workers' (Socialist Worker)

JAPAN OF old did not have a captive black population to use and abuse. So the Burakumin were created to fill that economic and social vacuum at the bottom of society. They are still there.

If the job is dirty or dangerous or carries a social stigma, hire the Burakumin. They will take the job. They have few options and, like everyone else in Japanese society, need money to live--even in their ghettos. Besides, that's what a permanent "untouchable" class is for.

It was that way centuries ago when the Samurai class created the Burakumin to take care of society's dirty work. And it is that way now, when the wreckage of four nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi needs to be cleaned up, and the utility does not want to waste trained employees on jobs that will contaminate them and make them ineligible for further work in the nuclear field.

"They are the 'throwaway people," said Yuki Tanaka, professor of history at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan's Hiroshima City University. "They are the Untouchables."

... full story at Socialist Worker.

California: San Onofre nuclear power plant forbidden to reopen

In an unprecedented (but clearly necessary) decision the US National Radiation Committee forbade the facility near Los Angeles to ever reopen, after most of its installations were found to be extremely eroded. 

Naturally concerns have been growing in the area since the damage was known just months ago, in some cases even making evacuation drills and distributing iodine tablets.

The inevitable decision puts the Californian electric grid under pressure because of the widespread use and abuse of air conditioning in the summertime. However the risk was obviously too big and total decomissioning (a very expensive procedure that they always pretend to the delay the most) may be in the agenda for this NPP. 

Southern California could well invest in clean solar energy. Just saying.

Source: EneNews, Los Angeles Times.

Pension Funds begin to collapse... beginning by Japan

I've always though that private pension funds not guaranteed by the state were a scam, a Ponzi scheme much like Madoff's... but, well, when private retirement plans were promoted all around, it was also when Madoff was a respectable (???) businessman, even heading the Dow Jones. 

Finally they are beginning to collapse. And where else can that happen first but in aged Japan, whose economic solidity was already vanishing in the last decades and has finally been shattered to the ground by the Fukushima catastrophe. 

A major private retirement speculation company AIJ Investment Advisors had to apologize in Parliament after losing $1.3 billion in pension money. The loss does not just affect pensioners or would be retirees but also the business that got them involved in these schemes.

Source: Yahoo! news.

'As Fukushima worsens, US approves new nukes' (Common Dreams)

Nuclear Regulatory Commission OKs New Nuclear Plants in South Carolina

Despite reports this week that the Fukushima nuclear situation may be even worse than previously thought, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given approval today for two combined licenses for two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, only the second time in the last three decades that new nuclear plants have been approved in the nation.

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., a unit of SCANA Corp., and Santee Cooper, South Carolina's state-owned electric and water utility, will begin construction on the reactors in Fairfield County, S.C. at the Summer nuclear power site.  

...

... full story at Common Dreams.

Germany: 465 antifascists arrested in Frankfurt, after massive anticapitalist demo

My computer has been down for some time these last days and I may have missed some important news. Among them is this massive anticapitalist demo that took place on Saturday 31st in the financial capital of Germany: Frankfurt.

It seems that, besides the Basque Country, Galicia and the state of Spain, there have been also anticapitalist protests these days in some other places. One was Germany. 

That day some 6000 people marched through Frankfort and mildly attacked some banks with paint and breaking glasses, eventually also clashing with police. 

There are many photos at Act for Freedom Now! and several videos at Contra Info.

According to Sare Antifaxista[es], as many 465 people were eventually arrested as result of the clashes.

Clashes with Danish fascists result in 25 arrested in Aarhus

Some 25 people were arrested by police in Aarhus, Denmark, after members of Danish Defence League gathered some hundred people from around Europe in order to spread their message of hatred. 

The Antifascist reaction gathered 5000 people, from the three Scandinavian countries, who protested peacefully. However some two hundred antifascists breached the police line and attacked the Fascists.

The DDL is a branch of the infamous English Defence League, as is the Norwegian Defence League, which had among its members (under pseudonym) the butcher of Utöya, A. Breivik. Their ideology is similar to that of the Nazis but instead of hating Jews they have become allied of Zionism, as nowadays Antisemitism has transformed into Islamophobia and Israel is (quite correctly) perceived as a Crusader state by these reactionaries.

Source: Sare Antifaxista[es].

The electronic police state

NSA's key is that of your home

Excerpted from Final Curtain Call? Deep State Surveillance and the Death of Democratic Alternatives (Antifascist Calling):

"In an Electronic Police State," Cryptohippie averred, "every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping... are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it--the evidence is already in their database."

In stark contrast to feckless promises to undo the egregious constitutional violations of the Bush regime, The New York Times reported that the "Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may access, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats."

On March 22, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signed-off on new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that "will lengthen to five years--from 180 days--the center's ability to retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism," investigative journalist Charlie Savage wrote.

So essentially, even if you have US citizenship, you are legally subject to very possible five-years-long recording of all your unencrypted communications, recording which can be used against you on trial or just to destroy your reputation.

NSA headquarters

More:

Binney explained "that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation's cable landing stations--the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law."

"Instead," Binney told Wired, the agency "chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country--large, windowless buildings known as switches--thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. 'I think there's 10 to 20 of them,' Binney says. 'That's not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast'."

What means that the surveillance is directed against US citizens in US soil. 

Note: while the FBI and the CIA are best known US secret services, maybe the most important agency is actually the National Security Agency (NSA), in charge of coordinating them all. 

More:

Narus, an Israeli firm founded by retired members of the IDF's secretive Unit 8200, now owned by The Boeing Corporation, and Verint, now Comverse Infosys, another Israeli firm, were close partners alongside NSA in these illegal projects; one more facet of the U.S. and Israel's "special relationship."

(...)

"Once a name is entered into the Narus database," Binney said, "all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA's recorders."

Unit 2800 base at Golan Heights

Unit 8200 is the Zionist core secret service, roughly comparable with the NSA, directly dependent from the Zionist Army, known as IDF. The identity of the boss of this all-powerful unit is not made public.

They conclude:

We need not speculate as to when an American police state will be fully functional, it already is.

Full story at Antifascist Calling.

Bahrain: kidnapping, torturing and raping minors in the name of Allah and Uncle Sam (BCHR)

The brutal reality of Western-supported Khalifa fascism is not suitable for sensible eyes. From Bahrain Center for Human Rights:

The child Ali AL-Singace: another victim in the series kidnapping, torture and sexual harassment by the security services

The general prosecution continues its role as dishonest opponent in hiding the torture and crimes carried out by the security services

1 April 2012

Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses its concern on the continued cases of kidnapping and assaults on children by the security men and the secret police in Bahrain. What increases the concern is the impunity policy practiced by the Bahraini authorities to protect the human rights violators and aggressors, and helping them to escape punishment by avoiding conducting serious investigations of the incidents of abuse and with full cooperation of the public prosecution and the judiciary. Most often, the victims are children, which is a direct violation of Bahrain pledges to protect and ensure the rights of the child including the right to protection from physical assault.

On Wednesday morning 21 March 2012, Bahrain Center for Human Rights was informed about the kidnapping incident and abuse of the child Ali Abdalshaheed Al-Singace (16 years), for the third time within one month[2], after finding him by witnesses lying in one of the garages located near (Matam bin Khamis) in Sanabis area where protests regularly take place.

According to the testimony of his father, Ali Al-Singace was heading to school at about seven o’clock in the morning, when he was kidnapped from the street by a civilian car carrying 3 people, who handcuffed Ali with plastic handcuffs and beat him until he fainted.

Upon the arrival of Sayed Yousif AL-Mahafdha – BCHR’s Head of Monitoring & Follow Up– Al- Singace was still unconscious, and handcuffed, without his underwear, he was bleeding, and wounds appeared on his body; his arms, his thighs and abdominal.

After he regained consciousness, Al-Singace reported that the passengers of a black car (Nissan Tida) were members of the secret police, two of which were foreigners, and one of them was an Arab nationality. He was beaten with a knife and punched, and he was sexually harassed by removing his clothes and touching and putting a black plastic on his genitalia several times, and they were trying to sexually assault him but he resisted them[3].

The marks of abuse on the body of Al-Singace, photos were taken on 21 March 2012

This was not the first time to attack Al-Singace, but the third. He was first attacked on 16 February 2012 and was kidnapped and beaten with a knife[4] by the secret security personnel. They asked him to work with them as an informer, but he refused, as a result of his refusal, he was beaten with a knife. Besides, Bahrain center has documented several and similar cases of kidnapping over the past months.

... full story at Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Radioactive debris kills: Japanese mayor dies few days after suicidal pro-nuclear act

The mayor of Hidaka, Japan, was hospitalized yesterday, just two days after he was present in a radioactive debris incineration performance, designed to sell nuclear waste as "safe" against all common sense. He died hours later.

Source: Fukushima Diary (link 1, link 2).

Greece: 30 detention centers to be built, while police and Nazis join efforts against immigrants and leftists (OL-FTGS)

Police and Nazis have started mass operations in Athens targeting people of colour and antifascists – 30 new detention centres to be built by the government in Greece

The Parties are preparing for elections and the government that has cultivated for several months -via government friendly media- xenophobic rhetoric, more or less blaming migrants for the economic crisis, announced that 30 new detention centres will be built in the country. Meanwhile, police is carrying out daily mass ‘sweeper operations’ as they call them, this in fact means hundreds of police officers invading without warning an urban district, blockading entire building blocks in the centre of the city and then they raid the area detaining everyone who is of colour. On Thursday 29/03 they detained 1,226 people and eventually charged 54 of them.

Parallel to the formal targeting of migrants by the police, the neo-nazis who have been enhanced politically operate as well, beating up people of colour in the neighbourhoods of Athens but also attacking to antifascists, like they did a few days ago in the University of Athens, Physics and Mathematics department, where they injured students. A few days ago Skaramanga Squat in Athens issued a communiqué responding to the recent damages to motorcycles parked in front of the squat by policemen and men in helmets titled: ‘When the boss does not feel safe, then he looses the leash of his dogs’.

The NGO-run Network for Recording the Racist Violence, in its first pilot research recorded 63 incidents of explicit racist violence taking place the last 3 months of 2011. These are just the incidents that was possible to be recorded as many of them pass unrecorded since the victims might be people without documents, so they do not even go to the hospital.

From: Occupied London - From the Greek Streets.

Sahrawi political prisoners in hunger strike for a month already (Pravda)

Five Saharawi political prisoners have withstood a heroic hunger strike since March 2: Mahjoub Oulad Cheik, Atiko Barray, Hassan El Ouali, Abdelaziz Barray and Cherif Ennassiri. They are held in deplorable conditions in the Black Jail of El Aiun. Why? Because they dared to take part in a peaceful demonstration for the self-determination of Western Sahara last year in the occupied Saharawi city of Dakhla.

More info at Pravda.