And it goes on, even in Iraq

I imagine most readers are following the media, so they may know already that the revolutionary processes are going on in Iran, Bahrain and Yemen, among other places, while the situation in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, etc. is still very much open and fluid. Definitively the peoples of the so-called Middle East are not having any more of tyranny and poverty and, as these are so widespread, we can only expect that the revolt will grow and grow, and extend across the often artificial and quite meaningless borders of the region causing major political changes. 

Interestingly the revolution is also extending to Iraq, where corruption and religious intolerance are wreaking havoc in the population since the USA invaded it in 2003.

Sadly the Empire will do everything on its hand to stop and revert this Revolution and this can already be seen in Egypt where the Army is making sure that nothing, absolutely nothing changes, what, of course, will only end up in another Revolution. Maybe Tantawi or Obama or Bibi don't get it but that's how life, real life, is - specially when the revolutionary cycle is on, and it is clearly on again, after some 30 years of Reaganist ethical wasteland.

I'd suggest that it's about time to follow the Tunisian and Egyptian example to the extent that is possible in each particular context at a worldwide scale. It's clear that, while, tyranny is one of the most obvious aspects of these revolutions, there are other deeper causes, namely poverty and injustice. 

Someone famously said at the imperial halls: "it's the economy, stupid!" And effectively, it is the damn stupid economy: after all people need to eat and pay the bills and, if they can't, they will revolt. It does not matter if the government is imposed by the Army or approved in a routine election in which you can only choose certain flavors and not others.

I tried to gather in a map the scenarios of the uprisings of the last years (since the Sidi Ifni ones of 2008) in the Euro-Mediterranean region. Red indicates stronger revolts, pink means milder or more localized ones, green stars indicate armed guerrillas, all them of ethnic nationalist nature. I may be missing some unrest focuses, if so, please tell me.

But what I do not doubt is that, when I republish this map in a few months, it will be much more red.


Update Feb 16: Libya too!

This is really pan-Arab and pan-Middle East: no authoritarian regime is safe it seems, even Qaddafi's unique blend of socialism, Arab nationalism and peculiar Islamism, may not withstand the anger of the people against autocracy and corruption.

This is clearly not about what banner you cower under but about how democratic, transparent and egalitarian the regime is. And there are too many corrupt tyrants and too few transparency and democracy in the whole region.

Revolutionary incidents of some dimension are reported today also in Bahrain, Iran, Yemen and Iraq. It's a total craze - albeit a very justified one. I can just imagine the ibn Sauds cowering in their marble halls unbelieving of what is brewing around them... because Saudia is not, in spite of all, an isolated state. Nor is Israel. And of course all this will end up in Palestine somehow, we all know that.

The Revolution that refuses to die

I expected, like most, that the Egyptian Revolution would come at least to hibernation with the coup by Tantawi and that at best we'd see a geographical scatter of the process to countries like Algeria and Morocco by the West or Jordan, Yemen and Saudia by the East. 

Yesterday the last die-hard revolutionaries in Tahrir Square were forcibly removed by the Army, which has not yet implemented some critical demands like the suppression of the State of Emergency and curfew that has been in effect since some 30 years ago, when former dictator Anwar el Sadat was murdered, or the liberation of the political prisoners.

But new demonstrations have arisen across the country today, taking a rather unusual class struggle shade, as they were staged by workers from the banking, transport and tourism sectors. A key demand is now a pay rise. 

Beyond Egypt

Other countries of the area are also experiencing continuous unrest: Algeria and Yemen are witnessing almost daily demonstrations by the tens of thousands, often resulting in violence, as the police tries to repress the people's freedom; Iran has also seen fresh protests, which have been quelled bloodily like in the times of the Shah, a clear sign of the totalitarian nature of the Theocratic Fascism in power in Tehran and a clear sign of its weakness in the face of a modern and factually atheist young generation. 

While we do not hear much from Tunisia or West Sahara these last days (except the Albanian-style mass migration of Tunisians to Italy), it is clear that the situation in these two countries is anything but normalized. Other states await their fate, with protests erupting even in Bahrain yesterday, surely a sign of things to come to the Arabia Peninsula. Because we all know that regimes like those of Saudi Arabia are totally obsolete and unpopular and will be removed one way or another but soon in any case.

I think that this year we are going to witness many major changes around the Mediterranean, not just in the Arab World but also in Iran and surely Central Asia (where some of the world's most infamous dictators still subsist), but also in Europe - let's not forget that in 2010 it was Europe, specially Greece and France but also other countries which were the center of mass socio-political uprisings, whose demands have not been met by the local nor pan-European governments.

It is going to be a most interesting year.

Quote of the month: Txillardegi

Maybe Basque language will not be saved with a state, but without a state for sure it will be lost. 

J.L. Álvarez Enparantz, Txillardegi at Berria, today. 

Finally: Mubarak resigns!

Interestingly he has not handed power (as would be legal) to his recently appointed vice-president, the also unpopular Omar Suleiman, aka Sheik al-Torture, but to the Military Council as a whole. 

This resignation finally clears the way for a transitional government of national unity and the calling of free elections for a Constituent Assembly. 

The people in Egypt is euphoric: after several weeks of struggle they have finally brought down the tyrant, constituting themselves into a true nation by the will of the people. 

Source: Al Jazeera.

NATO forces train for crowd suppression

One of the few advantages of a conscription army is that soldiers may be unruly and pass info to the media. That's what happens in Greece, where soldiers organized in the Free Soldiers Network Spartakos denounced that they are being trained to attack and control crowds, a role improper of an army in principle.

The troops were rallied with the following discourse:

We are NATO-led force. We are not training to suppress crowds in Greece, but abroad. Tomorrow we can be ordered to go to Egypt to suppress the rebellion. That is our role!

So the role of NATO is to invade countries like Egypt... I had the surely wrong idea that it was to defend the national territory of its member states, like Turkey against the Israeli attack last year. But it seems not... it's to do the caprice of Wall Street and AIPAC.  

A video of the exercises is available at YouTube.  So good for military secrets...

This kind of stuff reminds me of that great book of the late 80s entitled Military Intelligence... 

It had all pages blank.

Source: ContraInfo

Thousands surrround Egyptian TV, Presidential Palace

Al Jazeera's live blog on the Egyptian Revolution reports some 10,000 people surrounding state TV, not too far from Tahrir Square. More surprisingly maybe some 2000 people are reported at the Presidential Palace, located much farther away, in the Eastern outskirts of the capital. 

I imagine that it is very possible that tonight or tomorrow we will see some historical scenes like the takeover of the Bastille or that of the Winter Palace. This Revolution has indeed nothing to envy to the classical ones of Europe. Just that we do not know yet who plays Lenin or Marat, if anyone at all.


Update: the tyrant has fled to an unknown destination or to Sharm-el-Sheikh resort in Sinai Peninsula, depending on sources. However nobody in charge seems willing to go ahead with the necessary steps: removing Mubarak formally, creating a government of national unity and calling for immediate elections for a Constitutent Assembly.

Egyptian Army involved in arrests, tortures and killings

British newspaper The Guardian reports of many arrested by the Army, beaten and tortured. Many may still be missing in the secret prisons of the Egyptian dictatorship. 

The reasons for the arrests are wildly diverse but essentially for sympathizing or being suspect of sympathizing with the civic uprising. 

The Army, made up mostly of conscripts has pretended so far to be a "neutral force", unwilling to attack the people. But the reality seems to be quite different, more so as the Armed Forces are the main beneficiary of the massive US military aid,runs a good deal of the Egyptian economy and the current government is made almost exclusively of generals, Mubarak being one of them.

Earlier, Euronews reported of military repression against protesters in El Kharga, a large oasis town in the south of the country, killing at least three. 

A blockade of the Parliament by demonstrators was also reported.

Related: Pepe Escobar's latest: "Don't cry for me Suleiman"

Strikes reinforce the Egyptian Revolution

The Worker Movement had been quite squashed by the tyranny's repression in Egypt but it seems to be coming to life again now. And they can really turn the tide because they can paralyze something so critical for global economy as the Suez Canal. 

Yes: Suez Canal workers are among those striking.

The Egyptian Revolution is looking good, with Tahrir Square and other locations across the country still full of people protesting day after day, almost two weeks after the Intifada began. 

In contrast the new dictator de facto, Omar Suleiman, aka Sheik-al-Torture, a very unpopular character for his role in police repression (yet highly favored by Israeli and Saudi oligarchies), threatens with all his little mind can conceive: more repression.

But it looks to me that if workers walk out, he has nothing to do other than run away.

London: demo in solidarity with Egypt this Saturday

From Stop the War Coalition, via Jews sans frontieres.

Clinton summons nearly all US ambassadors to Washington

According to Cuba Debate (citing agencies, found via Cuestionatelotodo), Hillary Clinton summoned almost all ambassadors the USA has around the World (260) and many other diplomats (180) to Washington D.C. last Monday.

This meeting is totally unprecedented and nobody really knows why it happened at all. Of course issues like Wikileaks' cables or the Egyptian Revolution are probably related somehow but, as José Luis mentions, we cannot probably expect anything good from this most mysterious meeting.

No miracle in 'German miracle': cheating and exploitation

According to J.M. Álvarez, who cites Der Spiegel as source, the secret of the "new German miracle" is no other than extremely low salaries, supplemented by state subsidies. Some 10% German workers earn less than €1000 monthly, while this figure goes up to as much as 20% in East Germany.

€1000 is considered low income even in Spain. For the reference, a low apartment rent almost never is under €700 over here, to which one has to add food, clothing, transport, electricity (maybe €100 per month in winter), taxes, furniture, etc. €1000 is a true survival salary over here, so I guess that in Germany that is well under the poverty line. 

Naturally subsidies to under-earning workers amount to indirect subsidies to private capitalists, what in turn makes Germany companies unfairly competitive in the EU unified market, pushing competitors to impossible economic situations. 

The ECB-IMF recipe of budget cuts is in fact counter-producing, specially if the cuts affect social services, making local workers non-competitive. Can you work for less than €1000 in Spain? Really not, you can't - at least not in most towns. Can you in Germany? Yes because the state pays the difference. This makes the Spanish working force and, indirectly, companies to be unable to compete. 

The only possible solution (within the system) is to expand social expenditure (cut in Afghanistan troops or the King's salary if you wish) and to force the inflated housing market to collapse. If housing prices (and others like electricity) collapse to realistic market levels, then people could work for salaries that are competitive with those of Germany. 

Otherwise there are only two ways ahead: economic and social collapse or socialism. And probably both are the same one (one will bring the other possibly).

Basque Nationalist Left makes huge effort in order to adapt to Spanish ad hoc laws

In a public act today here in Bilbao, the Basque Nationalist Left (Ezker Abertzalea) has presented a new party, Sortu (To Create), by mouth of Rufi Etxeberria and Iñigo Iruin.

The key element is that the statutes of the new party make a huge effort in adapting to the Spanish law of political parties, designed ad hoc to make this major Basque political force illegal, by detaching themselves explicitly from violence and the so-called terrorism.

Transcripts of the interventions are available in PDF format: Etxeberria in Basque language (translation to Spanish), Iruin in Spanish. See also the main news article at Gara and the photo gallery.

My two cents: a waste of political capital for no reason at all: bowing to the fascists in Madrid in a pointless gesture of surrender

There is no particular reason why anyone would have to reject ETA while the heirloom of fascism is still present all through Spain and is not rejected nor investigated nor demanded to political parties like the PP to make a public stand of condemnation and rejection. Similarly terrorists like Felipe González (former PM and leader of the GAL) expressed their pride in state-sponsored terrorism in the 80s and 90s and yet they are not brought to trial nor their political parties declared illegal. 

I see absolutely no reason why Basque parties for the mere reason of being Basque and having a multifaceted complex approach to the Basque-Spain conflict and the violent aspects of it would have to bother doing what the Spaniards do not do themselves. 

So the only reasons are to give everything in favor of a peace solution and to attempt to run in the municipal elections (sometime soon, don't ask me when). 

But, as I do not see any counter-step from Spain or the Spanish nationalist single two-headed party PP-PSOE, such as condemning fascism or the GAL, or reforming the Spanish constitution to allow for self-determination of the peoples, or even stopping the repression for the sake of peace...

... as I do not see anything of that, I think this is just wasting time and energies, and lowering oneself too much to the demands of who can only be described as the enemies of the Basque People and the enemies of Democracy. 

Furthermore, I believe that Spain will choose the repressive path anyhow and all this will be useless except to demonstrate that Spain does not want peace at all. 

I am not even sure if I will vote for the new project at all. I am not really sure which is the difference between this new downgraded Ezker Abertzale project and Aralar (to which I have never voted nor I will ever vote). 

But at this stage it is not even known if the Spanish autocracy will allow free municipal elections in the Basque Country for a change so I'm speculating. It is very possible that Madrid will persecute the new formation and ban it from running anyhow (see this[es]).

Brain's electrical fields: feature, not any bug

Caltech researchers have found that the electric fields of the brain are not just any mere by product of neuronal electrical activity but that they actually provide feedback to neurones and is an important part of the cognitive process.

In the words of lead researcher Costas Anastassiou:

... while active neurons give rise to extracellular fields, the same fields feed back to the neurons and alter their behavior.

So far, neural communication has been thought to occur at localized machines, termed synapses. Our work suggests an additional means of neural communication through the extracellular space independent of synapses.

Importantly external electric fields as weak as 1 mV/mm alter the behavior of neurones. Typically mammalian brains have fields of 2-3 mV/mm or more, what implies that they are actually affecting the brain's behavior internally.

An open question is whether electric fields external to our bodies such as those produced by all types of machines, as well as electric and telecommunication installations, do have an effect in our brains and which one. Even the Earth has its own significant electromagnetic field which interacts with the also powerful Solar one in barely researched ways.

Source: Science Daily.

Ref. paper: Costas A. Anastassiou et al., Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons. Nature Neuroscience, 2011. Pay per view.

Five killed and 50 injured in new Tunisian clashes. Algerian sets fire to himself

The North African Revolution comes back to the West:

Four people killed and some other 50 injured at El Kef, NW of Tunis

According to Gara, citing EFE, some thousand people protested against the corrupt police chief of the town, to what he replied ordering to open fire. Two men (19 and 46) were killed on the spot, while other two died upon arrival to hospital. Some other 50 people were also attended in the hospital.

Riots continued until late at night anyhow, with several police vehicles burned at the police station.

Another murdered by police in SW Tunisia

Another person, 18, was killed by police at Kebili. Police agents shot a gas canister directly against him at short distance resulting in another case of institutional murder.

People were protesting against the new governor appointed by Ben Ali's Prime Minister, M. Gannouchi, who was formerly in charge of Kasserine and was well known for being corrupt and bad manager.

They also impeded state TV from filming because they consider that it is still in the hands of Ben Ali's minions. Three journalists were injured.

This is the third uprising this week in Southern Tunisia, since three political prisoners were burned alive at local police station.

Self-immolation in Algeria

A young unemployed man from Ain Defla, West of Algiers, set himself on fire while crying against oppression. Police agents impede him from burning and brought him to hospital.

This happened after some one hundred unemployed people from around the country had organized a peaceful sit in before the Ministry of Work. Upon Police attack, which caused two injured, this one attempted to set himself on fire.

Tahar Belades, of the Algerian Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed, declared:

We have come from afar to demand an end to oppression and we have been answered with batons against our heads.

After the aggression two representatives of the unemployed were received by the authorities. Belades explained that they demanded work and dignity and an end to abusive job cessations and ill treatment against unemployed people.

Demos called in Algeria for next Saturday

The Algerian National Coordination for Democracy and Change (CNDC), formed by the main opposition party RCD and human rights and other popular organizations, has called a national demonstration in Algiers and other major cities like Oran, in demand of political change and the abolition of the state of exception, in force since 19 years ago.

Source: Gara[es]: for Tunisia, for Algeria.

Army and police shot protesters dead in Egypt

As the standoff between the Egyptian Nation and the Zionist-imposed tyrant continues, more images of crimes committed by the Egyptian state against the People are becoming known now.

From Al Jazeera:

US Embassy car ran over 20 demonstrators on Jan 28th

This has been known only recently, as the blackout on the Internet has been lifted.

CNN claims it was "a stolen car" but it totally looks like a excuse. Much more likely is that some US embassy silverspoon believed in some typical Gringo paranoid reaction that his life was in danger and that all those peaceful demonstrators were armed Al Qaeda operatives or whatever, just like those Rambos who murdered unarmed journalists, their contacts and some passersby, including children, who tried to help the injured from a helicopter in Iraq. 

They just snap and kill a dozen... they should stay in Kansas, really.

Via: Cuestionatelotodo,

Nasser's son shows up at Tahrir Square

The son of the most popular leader Egypt and the whole Arab World ever had Gamal Abdel Nasser showed up at the demonstrations today in Cairo.

Sources[es]: Las cavilaciones de Enmerkar, Cuestionatelotdo (and obviously Al Jazeera, it seems from the video itself).

Pic of the month: most ingenious and simple street struggle device

From the Egyptian Revolution popular ingenuity:

 

I have seen curious stuff in my life but never before a street guerrilla catapult made up with such simple materials.

Found at BBC (still from the video).

European Parliament in Brussels suffers armed robbery

This is kind of funny: two robbers, one of the armed robbed a post office in the EP building in Brussels (left) while MEPs were holding a meeting just a hundred meters away. 

They only got 8000 euros (not too much for such a high risk robbery) but they managed to flee the crime scene. A previous armed robbery in the same complex obtained 60,000 euros, a much more serious prize.

British MEP Fiona Hall, who arrived just minutes after the robbery took place declared:

For an armed robbery to happen - again - inside the European parliament means that the security system here is a complete farce. 

Indeed.

Source: BBC.

Anyhow it is possible to breach into NATO headquarters, it has been done before quite easily (I know personally some who did and I saw the video - quite funny the angry generals): there's nothing impossible in this life with determination and bit of luck.

Egypt goes to the streets again massively

The so called "Day of Departure" was the ultimatum drawn by the divided and weak Egyptian opposition parties, who are certainly not the leaders of this revolutionary movement at all but just hang around it rather uselessly. 

In any case the demonstrations on this Friday have been massive in Cairo and many other cities in Egypt.

Yet Mubarak does not want to leave (he says he does want but it's just a lie) and there is no mouse leader able it seems to hang the bell from the cat's neck. The ideal solution would have been a military coup complementary to the popular massive action but there is no general no colonel with the determination or clarity of vision to do it. Not yet at least. 

Arms for the people I say: I want the US second amendment (reight to bear arms) implemented globally, so the peoples of the World can take power on their own and oppose tyranny actively. I'm really tired of nonviolence: at some moment the line must be crossed and the tyrant shot down.

Nonviolence only makes sense when the leaders are more or less willing to listen to the people. But when there is no democracy and no freedom of speech, when police and death squads descend by night to kill you, it makes almost no sense. 

Weapons for the people! That is the only solution: second amendment for all!