Zionist piracy act against Free Gaza aid flotilla (2)

I blogged this morning on the violent act of piracy in international waters by the Zionist military. Now it is time to make a more serene review, even if the situation is still very confuse.


Ship still sailing towards Gaza

A last minute [update: confirmed but with caveat, see below about the second flotilla] news item from Twitter is that the VM Rachel Corrie, of Irish flag, has not been captured and is still heading to Gaza.


Piracy act

First of all it must be set clear that according to the Law of the Sea this is an unjustified act of piracy in international waters.

Territorial waters are almost identical to land territory and in them the state can enforce all local laws and policies. States also have authority on pollution, taxation, customs and immigration in the contiguous zone.

In the economic exclusive zone (EEZ) states have no authority except on the exploitation of natural resources (fisheries, oil, gas, etc.) Some of these merely economic privileges can also be applied in the continental shelf beyond the 200 miles line.

A nautical mile is approximately 1.8 kilometers, so the Israeli contiguous zone ends at roughly 40 kilometers from its coast.

When attacked, the Free Gaza flotilla was at 75 miles from the coast, clearly in international waters, where Israel has no authority other than over exploitation of natural resources, which was clearly not the case.


Casualty figures

It seems that my earlier figure of 20 people murdered and some 50 injured is more or less correct. I have been browsing very different news sites and, while some still mention 16 mortal victims, many already put the figure in 19-20, of which at least 10 are Europeans and at least 6 are Turks. No identities are yet known.

The fascist censorship imposed by Israel is not helping at all to get things clear. It is obvious that they fear scrutiny and that are anything but a democratic state where freedom of speech and information is granted.


Protests

Innumerable demonstrations have been held through the world and specially in Europe and West Asia, including Turkey and Palestine. I cannot really account for them all but I understand that there have been protests in all middle sized towns in West Eurasia, at least that is the case in the Basque Country.

In Qandaliya, Palestine, US citizen Emily Henochowicz was shot in the face with a gas canister by Zionist units during a nonviolent protest and has lost an eye.

Institutional reactions

The official reactions from the governments and other institutions have so far been mixed. Most affected countries have merely issued vague concern statements and at most summoned the local Zionist ambassador to issue explanations.

An exception is Turkey, a major regional power, which has expelled the Israeli ambassador and canceled join military drills with Israel. Similarly, Greece has also canceled joint military exercises with the Zionist entity.

Another state that has "emphatically condemned" the Israeli attack was Venezuela, denouncing Israel for its "genocidal and terrorist nature" and declaring their "solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, national sovereignty and dignity".

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the US government, totally controlled by the Zionists, which apparently has not even bothered summoning the ambassador and has issued a most vague declaration.

Turkey has also called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, while the Arab League is set to have a summit tomorrow.


Defensive violence?

Israel has claimed that their attack was met by violent resistence by some of the passengers, who knocked down the boarding commandos, attacked them with batons and chairs and what not.

I have watched the alleged Israeli military footage and it's not conclusive, specially considering the lack of credibility that the Zionist entity has, almost systematically lying about what happens in their police and military operations. One of the less credible claims is that a fire bomb was launched at them because you can see a flying object but it does not explode nor any fire is visible after it touches ground. Reports from Tel Aviv that they were subject to gunfire are also totally false: the ship was searched by the Turkish authorities before leaving port and there was nothing of that, no footage shows anything like that either: the only ones shooting in every occasion are the Zionist terrorists.

Also Israel has the capability of faking all that.

However it seems that some of the claims of violent resistence aboard the Mavi Marmara ship are real. This video shot from inside the ship shows some instances of passengers trying to neutralize the attackers in what can be considered a violent defense.

This must be strongly criticised because when you are in a nonviolent operation, you just cannot do that: it is naive and counter-producing.

However that does not justify the Israeli murders. Remember that we are talking of a piracy action by an armed group in international waters and that the passengers were legitimately defending their ship from such an attack.

Also if Israel would have treated this as a police and not a military conflict, it is most likely that the casualties could have been avoided. But Israel is so fascist and paranoid that even a peaceful aid convoy is treated as a military threat. The official discourse of Israel is that they are at war, though there is no state attacking them at all and the occasional rocket shooting, almost non-existent since the criminal attack and subsequent siege on Gaza and the parallel imposition of a puppet government in the West Bank bantustan, can only be considered a problem of public order, never a military threat.

They are a military-religious entity, not different from, say, the Templars or Al Qaeda, and that's how their limited fanatic minds and their circular propaganda discourse works: all is war, and in war all is legitimate. Under this discourse genocide becomes normal, civilians become deadly enemies to be shot and tortured and humanitarian aid becomes a matter of national security.

The problem of Israel is however political and ethical, not military.


Remembering Nick Clegg's statements

Among the many sites I have been looking in search for news, I have found this December 2009 article at The Guardian by current UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, in which he states that the blockade of Gaza must be lifted.

Well, Mr. Clegg, now that you are sustaining and participating in the government of one of the most powerful states in the Euromediterranean region, with a huge navy, nuclear weapons and military bases at Cyprus, you can do something about it, right? For instance sending the Royal Navy to secure free access of humanitarian aid to Gaza and/or imposing sanctions against Israel.


Note: the content of this post will be updated as needed in the coming hours. I am not going to post of discuss anything else for the time being, really. This is a most critical episode in ongoing history.

A lot of information can be found at Palestine Blogs Aggregator but in particular I must mention Window into Palestine, which is covering the massacre and related events in great detail.


Updates:

At Ashdod, it has been reported that Zionist nazi settlers attacked the reporter from Al Jazeera.


(Confirmed, see below) Turkey may send an aid convoy supported by its navy

Window into Palestine reports that Turkey "warned that further supply vessels will be sent to Gaza, escorted by the Turkish Navy, a development with unpredictable consequences". No source is provided but so far this blog has been extremely informative, often in advance of what has been reported elsewhere.


Palestine Think Tank publishes an emotive poem by Sahar Ahmed saluting the Freedom Flotilla heroes that really touches you.


Under My Olive Tree publishes the message of a sensible Israeli teenager whose heart is broken by the fascist horror and corruption of his "country" and that really makes you feel sad about the poor Israelis who are conscious (not many but there are some).


Window into Palestine publishes addresses by former USA congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and by former UK MP George Galloway (audio), both promoters of the initiatives to break the criminal siege of Gaza.

Galloway reports that the actual figure of killed people is 29, as some of the members of the expedition managed to message just before arrival to Ashdod.

He also mentions that the British Foreign Ministry has used the unusually hard verb "condemn" in regard to this attack and has called for the siege of Gaza to be lifted, which are unprecedented declarations from British authorities.


The Guardian has a list of some famous people who were part of the expedition. Among them, Peace Nobel prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, three German MPs (Annette Groth, Inge Höger and Norman Paech) and 80 years old Holocaust survivor David Schermerhorn, a US film producer. An incomplete list of passengers from Europe, North America and Palestine can be found at Free Gaza.


Window into Palestine mentions that NATO is to hold an emergency meeting on Turkish request. The vast majority of the passengers of the Freedom Flotilla are citizens of NATO member states, including many from Turkey but also from Greece, Britain, Germany, Spain, the USA... and, of course, the troublemaker attitude of Israel is of grave concern for many of them.


A media outlet that is broadcasting some interesting interviews is Russia Today (in English). I had never before heard of this channel but they have some good stuff such as this interview with Palestinian human rights activist Wisan Ahmad who clearly puts Israel credibility and legitimacy in its real place: zero, and explains how the Freedom Flotilla and similar civic initiatives are only filling the gap that should have been taken by the international community of states (UN, etc.) long ago.


Another news site that has some decent coverage is, naturally, Al Jazeera, which is still today following in live format the events as they unfold. For instance here there is a video-report on some of the reactions to the outrageous criminal attack.

It also mentions that elderly former US ambassador Edward Peck, 81, has been the first passenger to be released and sent back home (Associated Press link) and that all 535 passengers have been offloaded from the ships (however other sources mention more than 700 passengers).

The Qatari channel also has a review of statements by international leaders and an article on previous internationalists murdered by Israel: Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and James Miller were all killed in 2003. Tristan Andersson barely survived with severe brain damage after being hit by a gas canister thrown to his head in 2009.


The International Middle East Media Center, a Palestinian information site, mentions among other things that the whole family (both parents and six siblings) of activist Osama Qashoo, a British citizen who appeared in videos distributing what might be painkillers or antibiotics after the Zionist attack, are going on hunger strike until Israel releases him safely.


Found a source on the Turkish plan of sending further humanitarian aid to Gaza with military escort: IBN live. The same news item mentions that Egypt is facing huge pressure to lift the blockade of Gaza.


Besides Egypt, the ball is now at the US court. It seems obvious that the World (and by this I mean the whole World, including all other members of the UN Security Council) is not satisfied at all by the vague concern expressed by Barack Obama, who is obviously afraid to upset his Zionist support base. Either the USA shows clear leadership in forcing Israel to make important concessions or the reality is one of a leaderless World and a leaderless NATO, which may well be heading for a military showdown between two major US allies, both holding nuclear weapons in their territory.

Israel is behaving like a mad dog but the USA is behaving like a wimp, unworthy of global leadership, apparently unable to take any decision without the consent of Tel Aviv and to follow an independent and sovereign international, or even national (think Goldman Sachs), policy.


According to The Raw Story, an Al Jazeera "raw video" (same as the one linked above, I believe) shows that the Zionist troops were shooting before boarding the Mavi Marmara.


Window into Palestine, citing AFP, mentions that 48 of the arrested have been released already and sent back home, while other 480 remain under arrest. However I have already mentioned that other sources talk of a total of more than 700 passengers in the Freedom Flotilla.


The same blog also deals with the hot UN Security Council meeting of today, with the Turkish ambassador accusing Israel of "tantamount piracy" and "murder" and saying "it has lost all legitimacy".


Mondoweiss suggests that technically the Zionist attack is not an act of piracy, as I stated above, but an illegal attack in any case. The reason is that piracy is carried only by private actors and in this case it was a state (though the legitimacy of the state of Israel is highly doubtful). Whatever the case, it was an illegal criminal act in Turkish jurisdiction (at least in what regards to the Mavi Marmara, of Turkish flag). Hence, legally Israel has two options: (1) deny responsability (extremely unlikely) and hand over its commandos to Turkey to be judged there or (2) accept full responsability, in which case, Israel is technically at war with Turkey and the action is a war crime.

I understand that, as Turkey is member of NATO and Israel is not, technically all NATO is obliged to support Turkey because the charter of this alliance states that members must defend each other in case of attack in North America, Europe, West Asia or insular possessions north of the Tropic of Cancer. This issue will be surely raised at the NATO emergency meeting that has been called on behalf of Turkey. I would have to check the details of NATO's charter but the attack borders a declaration of war to NATO as whole.


Other details from Al Jazeera's live coverage are that:

A second Free Gaza aid flotilla will be sent. This flotilla is made up by the MV Rachel Corrie, which was delayed and is only 300 km away from Gaza and probably the two ships that had mechanical problems (read Zionist sabotage) and could not leave port.

The Israeli Army has declared that will send the humanitarian aid in the flotilla to Gaza via land route at 8:30 GMT (which is 10 minutes from now).


Justice mentions that the UN Security Council has already issued an statement calling for "an impartial inquiry into Israel's raid on a flotilla of Gaza-bound aid ships". The statement said the inquiry should be "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent".

It seems a most weak statement to me, sign of a weak position by the USA. This weakness in front of criminal Israel, I fear, we will have to pay with more blood as Israel now feels immune again. I put all responsibility on the shoulders of Barack Obama and hist ultra-Zionist cabinet.


La Haine has a photo-report of some of the protests in the Spanish state.

Bilbao


Valencia
I chose this one because the banner highlights the global danger (peligro mundial) that Israel poses if left unchecked

Valladolid

Israel attacks Free Gaza ships. At least 20 murdered.

Part of me really can't believe it. And of course deep feelings of mortal hatred are now burning inside.

Israel has declared war on Humankind.

What else is attacking a peaceful convoy with humanitarian aid and killing the people carrying them, including maybe members of your parliament or the bishop of Jerusalem, and of course many other less famous but equally heroic people.

At the moment I don't have words. I was watching some videos at YouTube on the nonviolent enterprise and was getting ready to write a "heat up" post on the matter, imagining that the situation would unfold in one way or another (but certainly not in this way) along the day or maybe tomorrow.

So I checked Chet's blog Justice that has been covering the nonviolent operation systematically and I was stroke by the most horrible possible news: the cold blood murder of these heroes. I checked at Al Jazeera and there it was the bloody spite on the face of Humankind.

I feel sad but specially I feel terribly angry about this. We have to put with much in our lives but that a micro-state, a tiny protectorate of NATO with no legitimacy whatsoever, dares to do this is too much.

I demand that EU and NATO, entities that supposedly defend me as European citizen, declare immediate war to Israel and annihilate it. Nonviolence has been destroyed as an option in the Palestinian conflict, this sadly shows that there can't be a solution in Palestine by peaceful means.

... Just hate them more than ever before. The Zionazi entity must be banished from the face of Earth and that must happen now. Humankind can't just sit and watch, much less finance or even tolerate any form of finance to the Judeo-Nazi state. It's just like with Hitler: we can't wait a minute more because each minute we do nothing they murder more people.

It's time to dismantle Israel.

Updated info at Twitter Free Gaza. Last is 10 people murdered, Zionist commandos dropped from a helicopter on the largest ship and started shooting everybody (who of course were unarmed civilians). At least 30 more injured. Casualty figures will surely increase as the facts become more clear.

But we will never forgive in any case.


Updates:

The death toll is rising fast. According to Window into Palestine, at least 20 people were murdered.

Also there are "innacuracies" and blunt lies in many informations from mainstream media:

Some media have reported that the Zionist troops intervened in Israeli territorial waters. That is totally incorrect and it was not Gaza territorial waters either. As you can see on the map at Witness Gaza, the last "ok" communication before the assault happened in international waters at, roughly, the latitude of Tel Aviv or Haifa. The humanitarian flotilla has always sought to avoid Israeli waters traveling only through international zones or, necesarily, Gaza territorial waters, which in this case they did not reach.

Israel is spreading now the lie that the attackers faced resistence from people armed with sticks and knives. That is also false: reported video evidence (known link is this one but it's a live stream from Turkish IHH television channel, I'll change it as soon as I have a more useful link) shows soldiers landing on the ship and opening fire without any sort of provocation.

Also a growing number of Turkish citizens is concentrated at the giant Israeli consulate in Istanbul. Some attempted earlier to storm it but were repelled by the police. It seems very likely that Turco-Israeli relations, already very damaged but once very strong, are going to be slashed. Turkey is not only one of the greatest regional power but is also a NATO member.

See also the official site of the nonviolent campaign Free Gaza.


More updates (demos):

Some of the protest demonstrations called for today in Europe are:

· London: today at 14:00 at Downing Street
· Uppsala: today at 17:00 at Stor Torget
· Stockholm: today at 18:00 at Plattan, with demonstration planned to head to the Israel embassy
· Madrid: today at 19:00, in principle in front of the ministry of foreign affairs

Source: La Haine[es] (also photos and some videos of the attack there)


More updates:

Israel has declared military censorship on all the info on the attack. For that reason, as all the flotilla has been captured by the Zionist pirates and communications have been cut, the exact number of casualties is not well known. Figures vary between 16 and 20 killed and maybe 50 injured.

It is also unclear if the Zionist troops began shooting already in the ships or before boarding them.

Indymedia Chicago reports that one of the injured, or maybe killed, may be a member of the European Parliament but no name is given.

Kaosenlared[es] gathers reports from several media in Spanish and English and mentions that Spain has summoned the Israeli ambassador, as three Spanish citizens were in the ships (to activists and a journalist from TeleSur). They also mention that the Arab League has called an emergency summit for tomorrow.

FreeGaza Twitter page says that the ships have been taken to the port of Ashod, where the activists are as well, the injured have been taken to Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv and to Rambaun.

British newspaper The Guardian is trying to make a live coverage of the attack in blog and twitter format with mild success. Among other items Harriet Sherwood mentions, largely based on rumors, that, besides Turkey and Spain, also Greece has summoned the Israeli ambassador, that Palestinian leader Sheikh Rayed Salah has been injured and is undergoing surgery, that the Zionist military has closed roads in the West Bank and access to Temple Mount in Jerusalem, that at least one demonstration was called in Jerusalem for today and that four of the injured are naval commanders and that one of them is seriously injured.

Somewhere else (don't ask me where) it's said that even that Zionist agent that is Mahmmoud Abbas has felt obligued to condemn Israel for the massacre.


And more:

Israeli newspaper Haaretz also has some stuff. However, considering the repeated reports (and my own careful confirmation) that adverts in this newspaper spread a virus, I strongly recommend to access it with javascript disabled and antivirus guard activated.

Bradley Burston mentions that Gaza has become the Israeli "Vietnam" but most importantly, considering the reports of Palestinian demonstrations being organized in all the territory, Amos Harel warns of a third Intifada if the reports that Raed Salad is among the casualties (seriously wounded is the rumor) are confirmed.

Demonstrations have also been called in Barcelona (19:00 at Israel consulate) and Seville (20:00 at Plaza Nueva), as reports TerceraInformación.

Thousands of Basques demonstrate at Brussels

Thousands of Basque youths reached out to the capital of the European Union to demonstrate in demand of sovereignty and civil rights.


As you can see in the photo above, the central slogan of the demo was "Freedom for the Basque Country - Civil and Political Rights for the Basque Youth".

This was surely the only banner in English, others read in Basque and French: "Independence", "Committee 'Liberez-les' of Support for Political Refugees and Prisoners" and "International Solidarity - Without Rest Until Victory".

The demonstration had been called by GaztEHerria (Young People, with a letter play of EH meaning Euskal Herria: the Basque Nation or People), a plural platform of Basque organizations.

Additionally, the march had support of other European nationalist movements such as Sinn Féin and the Flemish Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie.

The buses departing from the Basque Country suffered from police hostigation and delaying tactics but all arrived to Brussels in time for the demo to take place.

Sources:
· Boltxe Kolektiboa[es], with many more photos
· Gara[es]

Danish pharmaceutical giant retrieves insulin drug from Greece

Throwing salt on the Greek injury, Danish pharmaceutic corporation Novo Nordisk has retrieved a key insulin drug from the Greek market after the government decreed that all medicine prices had to be cut by 25% (source).

It is the right and the duty of any government to guarantee as much as possible the the health and well being of its citizens, particularly those with special needs, in this case diabetics. Hence I understand that the Greek government and the European Commission (as EU government, even if unelected) have the right and the duty to guarantee that this medicine is delivered to European citizens in Greek as in Denmark, be it by grade or force, with or without the trademark and with or without the agreement of that stupid WTO mass-scam ring. No copyright, trademark, patent or whatever fancy pretext can justify the manslaughter of people by denying them readily available medicines.

Mr. Barroso: as President of the Government of the European Union, you have the duty to secure that these medicines are delivered to diabetic citizens at a reasonable price.

In memoriam: Dennis Hopper

Widely acclaimed actor Denis Hopper died today at the age of 74.

And you know what pisses me off more of all? That Wikipedia doesn't even have an entry for the film that made him famous in my mind and that of every person I know of (except maybe a couple of cinemaniacs): The American Way (aka The Riders of the Storm). Ok, it's a silly political counter-cultural comedy which is obviously written and directed under the effects of psychedelic drugs... but what the hell?! That's exactly what we like for a nice afternoon with some friends, that's exactly what makes life worth living... and not all the drama.


Sure, Hopper has a much wider career and this film did not get him any award but it's surely one of the movies that best represent the spirit of the 80s and the popular reaction to Reagan and all the mess he created up till now.

The American Way also embodied the spirit of counter-information (it's about an unlikely pirate TV station struggling against a neocon conspiracy) and reverts the fascist discourse of "anti-Americanism" making clear that The American Way is not neocons' hypocrisy and deceit but about freedom and real democracy.

It's a visual pamphlet that could well be titled The Star-Spangled Commie Fights Against Reagano-Fascism, while getting high and having fun.

Of course, this is a memorial post for one of the best actors of the past century, and I cannot ignore other titles that I have also enjoyed and which have much wider fame. However I must warn you that I don't watch so many movies and that I will surely miss some excellent material in the career of the star from Kansas.

Hopper debuted in two most famous James Dean movies: Rebel Without a Cause and Giant but he was really launched to fame with Easy Rider (1969), co, written, co-directed and co-starred with Peter Fonda, that gave him a Cannes award.

After some troubled years, Hopper returned to Hollywood with Apocalypse Now and then directed Out of the Blue (1980), a film that I have not yet watched but that seems to be a bête noir of the broadcasting industry because of obscene language and those idiocies that bother Christians and such.

In 1983 Coppola again hired him again for a secondary role in Rumble Fish, yet another film hated in the USA and acclaimed in Europe, winning a prize at Donostia (San Sebastian). In 1986 he had a more important role at David Lynch's widely honored Blue Velvet.

Besides of his film industry activity, both as actor and director, Dennis Hopper was also a multifaceted artist, who enjoyed photography, painting and sculpting.

Definitively life would have been at least somewhat lest interesting and fun without him and for that reason I will miss him and bid him farewell.

PS- I have, on this occasion and for the first time, created a poll at Leherensuge. You can vote anonymously on which is your favorite Hopper's film.

Eurozone's problem is Germany

Interesting review by Prof. Vincenç Navarro at his blog[es] on how the real problem of the Eurozone is not really the rather normal finances of peripheral countries but in the lack of demand of the central countries, notably Germany.

Germany, supposedly the economic engine of the EU, has been pretty low in the last decade, with small GDP growth figures and high unemployment. What is worse: the domestic demand of Germany has been lower than the peripheral countries now being punished for precisely sustaining the economy of the Eurozone (and specially of Germany itself) with their demand.

This is because Germany, still with a social-democrat government then, chose not to use the huge surplus that conversion to the euro generated to increase its domestic economy by rising salaries (and hence demand) but to speculate in the peripheral countries feeding the housing bubble and the deficit escalation.

Germany is in fact the wealthy but savy cousin who wants to sell commodities to their less well off relatives. And oddly enough, it has worked for a while, thanks to German (and French) credit. But logically this was untenable in the long run and now the Germans (and the French) want their money back by any means, what implies the destruction of the demand for German products.

As I said before, Mr. Volkswagen: how do you expect us to buy your cars if we work for misery salaries and pensions?

Navarro mentions that Oskar Lafontaine, then minister of economy and now co-leader of the growing communist Die Linke party, left Schröeder's government and the SDP for that reason. Lafontaine proposed instead a more balanced approach, increasing the income of German workers and hence the internal demand, what would have created a much more balanced EU and not this neocolonial engender designed for Mr. Volkswagen exporting until the demand runs dry (what is happening right now).

So what really needs to be fixed is that historical error that highly imbalanced the demand in the Eurozone. The demand by Germany and other Eurozone countries need to rise, what probably means increasing local salaries.

That does not mean that other barbarities like the Spanish housing bubble do not need to be addressed, they do. In fact Spaniards could work for less or demand more commodities if housing prices were not so extremely high, and that's a good reason to explode this bubble. But that would cause serious trouble to banks, who have invested heavily in this worthless excercise of financial engineering.

That's after all the real problem we have in EU: if we do what is logical (explode bubbles, restore a healthy demand by rising income), then banks would sink. Nobody cares about that except banks themselves, because they can always be replaced by other more serious banks, private or public. Of course some private investors would suffer but most people would be unscathed.

But the interest of the people does not matter to policy-makers, specially as EU is anything but a democracy, so Brussels and the Eurozone oligarchs have decided that it's best to make people pay for the errors of the banks and re-level the Eurozone demand to misery levels by lowering income and making sure that the banks are paid back.

This is extremely short-sighted: it's bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. Even for the bankers. If there is only a very low demand in the Eurozone, then Mr. Volksvagen (my imaginary archetype of European capitalists) won't be able to sell nearly anything and the economy will become stagnant for a very very long time.

The problem is clear: who dares to hang the bell from the cat's (banks') neck? It's much needed if we want to avoid Europe from sinking into misery and self-destruction.

Nobody? Then I think I know where the first socialist revolution of the 21st century will happen.

New paper on Spanish genetics

There's a new paper of some interest on Spanish population genetic structure:

J. Gayan et al. Genetic Structure of the Spanish Population. BMC Genomics. Open access.

The main aim seems to be to provide a Spanish dataset for population genetic research. And so far so good.

However the sampling strategy is awkward to say the least:

In the above map (my creation on the paper's data), red dots indicate sampling locations, while blue areas are regions (autonomous communities) not included in the sample. Most noticeable is that not just the Basque Country has been excluded but also all the surrounding area.

As I say, quite awkward.

Other surely distinctive unsampled areas are the Canary Islands and Galicia.

The whole design of the sample has a Castile-centric bias that is difficult to understand.

But, well, that's what they did. And, once we know that, we can go on to look at the results:

In this graph (fig. 6 annotated by me) we can see how Catalans and Andalusians tend to diverge from neutrality in orthogonal directions. To a less clear extent, the North Castilian samples (Arévalo, Segovia) also diverges somewhat.

We can say that PC1 describes a Catalan-other axis and PC2 an Andalusian-other one. The lack of distinctiveness of some geographically eccentric samples such as the Asturian one (Avilés)may well be caused by the small size of the sample. It is very possible that a PC3/PC4 graph would evidence some distinctiveness that is not apparent here.

Remember that PC graphs are merely bidimensional representations of some of the apparent structure, with all the limitations that this implies.


European comparison

When compared with other populations of European ancestry the PC graph is as follows (annotations by me on fig. 7):


Catalans appear to have some tendency towards Italy and NW Europe, while the less defined eccentricity of Andalusians only seems to tend towards Italy. There are also a couple of Castilian individuals who cluster with NW Europeans, maybe because the North Castile area sampled was the core of Visigothic settlement (just a hunch).


Global comparison

There's not much to say about Spaniards in the global scatterplot (fig. 8), really: all Europeans just cluster very tightly, the same as East Asians (Chinese and Japanese).

What I found intriguing and worth posting this graph is the curious coincidence of the scatter of Kenyan Maasai (MKK) and US African-Americans (ASW). Notice that the LWK sample (Luhya) are also from Kenya but Bantu and they cluster best with Nigerian Yoruba (YRI). Not really sure because it'd need further research but certainly the almost identical disposition of MKK and ASW samples is suggestive of the Maasai (and maybe other Nilotes) being somewhat admixed with West Eurasians. Alternatively the distribution might be reflecting some African-specific differences (just like Indians in the Eurasian context) and its overlap with African-Americans is to some extent an artifact of the limitations of PC analysis.

I do miss a comparison with North Africans, which seems to be a taboo in Iberian and European population genetic studies. However I do detect (and not only here) a slight "African" tendency among some Iberians which may well reflect a greater affinity with North Africans, in turn slightly more akin to ultra-Saharan Africans. This would be an interesting matter to analyze.

Update: I totally forgot to mention that just a few days ago I commented on another paper by a Catalan team that did compare Iberians and North Africans, which may serve for comparison. The results appear wildly different in the PC graph, with Catalans, Basques and Cantabrians clustering on one corner and the other Iberians scattered with a clear tendency towards the Eastern Mediterranean. No apparent North African affinity was detected.

Some DNA sequences have mutation rates 10-50 faster than normal

Just a quick note for the reference.

Methylated CpG sequences in DNA (C-G sequences noticed as CpG to make them apart from C-G bonds between the two 'mirror' DNA chains) have a much faster mutation rate than all other DNA. This is because the group, apparently related to the immune system often, is most unstable what yields a mutation rate 10-50 times faster than for the rest of DNA.

This may have implications for the molecular clock hypotheses but I'm not sure in which sense right now.

More information at Science Daily.

Ref. J.C. Walser and A. Furano, The mutational spectrum of non-CpG DNA varies with CpG content. Genome Research 2010. Pay per view.

A critique of the Latin American "new left" governments from the left

The always interesting James Petras addresses at Voltaire Net the issue of the limits and frustration of the "revolutionary" governments in Latin America. It is a very critical article that emphasizes how far from socialism these governments are and how this is triggering increasing protests by the grassroots that are accused of "trotskism" or even of helping the reaction.

It is a very long article that I can hardly synthesize here but basically he's saying that these governments, in their diversity, are mostly populist developmentalist (nationalist) soft capitalist systems under a red banner, much like China (red outside, white inside), which have not even realized the much needed agrarian reform, with the partial exception of Venezuela.

Petras also mentions how the strong revolutionary movement that existed a few years ago in Mexico has fragmented and looks powerless against the narco-feudalization of the country for that reason. In this context, he also makes the controversial claim that mafias offer a way out of poverty by means of "armed struggle", which has obviously no pretense to have political implications but may be true for the subjectivity of the individual slum-dweller and his/her survival and potential success immediate needs.

Possibly the conclusions can be those outlined in this paragraph:

The workers and peasants are increasingly recognizing that they are not the beneficiaries of the economic successes, growth and stability, celebrated by the leaders of the developmental regimes. The left must encourage, organize and capitalize on the masses’ rising expectations for higher living standards in the face of record high commodity prices. In recent years, too often, the left has fallen prey to the ‘theater’ of a self-described “new left” and its “anti-neo-liberal” rhetoric, even as it increases the presence of multi-national capital (MNC). The new “state-MNC” partnerships exclude the working class from the profits and revenue which, instead, are distributed between new rising middle professional and technocratic classes and foreign investors.

Criticism of the Left by the Left, as it should be. The Right is obviously not out of the process yet but it is just a dead weight, unable to produce any socially meaningful project, just more robbery and exploitation of people and Earth, something that has become simply unbearable. So, in a sense, we can say that the Right is out of the process and fatally damaged by its own incapability of generating happiness.

However the institutional Left is also limited by its own subservience to Capital and their own political liabilities, including personality cult and lack of revolutionary ambition. On the other hand it's difficult to imagine how such peripheral economies (though every day less peripheral probably) can lead the revolutionary process, that at this stage can only be global.

Though maybe I'm wrong in this.

Feeling the heat: Solar System set to enter hot galactic zone in maybe just a century

Quite interesting astronomical news today. Latest research suggests that the energetic neutral atoms' (ENA) Ribbon discovered last year interacting with the Heliosphere is at just a few hundred astronomical units (AUs), which is defined as the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun (roughly 8 light minutes or 150 million kilometers).

It seems that our Solar System will be entering that highly energetic area in the next century or so, with unclear implications. In principle it's something "normal" in the orbit of the Sun in the Milky Way but on the other hand it is something new for our experience and may also mean increased radiation.

More information at Science Daily.

Ref. S. Grzedzielski et al. A Possible Generation Mechanism For Theibexribbon From Outside The Heliosphere. The Astrophysical Journal, 2010. Pay per view.

General who ambushed Che brought to justice

Not for the murder, 41 years ago, of the most famous revolutionary leader ever but because he has been accused of involvement in the recent attempt of magnicide in Bolivia, being linked to the Hungaro-Croatan fascist terrorist Eduardo Rosza.

General Gary Prado is since today under home arrest awaiting trial. Again, I have been totally unable to find anything in the mainstream media. Being the sources of this news item the blog Guerrilleros, habanos y mojitos[pt] and the Bolivarian news site Aporrea[es].

In a related note, La Haine reports[es] that the Spanish (Fundación Iberoamericana EuropeaEuropean Iberoamerican Foundation) linked to the right wing Popular Party and originally led by former first lady Ana Botella, wife of José María Aznar, provided at least 250,000 € for the network lead by Rosza to murder Evo Morales and make a miliatry coup at Bolivia.

The same foundation was involved in the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

The coupist "charity" has in the last year received even greater founds by the Madrid Autonomous Community taxpayers, thanks to the hyper-fascist President of this Spanish region, Esperanza Aguirre, who donated them nothing less than 1.6 million euros, that, according to the most dubious Spanish newspaper El País would be to "strenghen the institutional capabilities and development of the less favored sectors of society" in Bolivia.

The links of this right wing "charity" to Latin American coupists, including strong ties with Guatemala's authoritarian regime, has been unveiled by German research journalist Ingo Niebel from Geheim Magazin.

USA and Brazil: America's largest nations in collision course

What the latest (un-)diplomatic row on Iran's nuclear program has shown is not just that, as I said earlier, the USA seems dead set to attack Iran no matter what, but that it's also dead set to sabotage everything that Brazil attempts. This was already very clear last year with the coup in Honduras and the de-facto annexation of Colombia, as well as in the most strange case of the US invasion of Haiti on the pretext of the earthquake.

According to Raúl Zibechi (La Haine[es]) this is all part of a growing confrontation between the USA and Brazil for influence in Latin America and around the World and therefore not really unexpected, not even by the Brazilian government.

For Zibechi this confrontation is anyhow centered at the Amazonia region and the control of South Atlantic oil. In other words: the USA aims to control Brazil as it used to do in the past. As reaction Brazil is building up for the unthinkable: a war with the greatest global power ever, a war they cannot afford to happen... or to lose if it does happen.

For that reason the Amazonian military region is seing its manpower doubled, the Army has grown 30% overall and new naval and air equipment is being added to the nation's military. All purchases include clauses of full technological transfer and none of them includes US-made material, but rather Russian or French. The goal is to create a Brazilian national military-industrial complex that does not need to rely too much on foreign imports.

Eventually Brazil will have to get nuclear weapons, of course, if it wants its dissuasive power to be effective. The National Defense Strategy of 2008 clearly speaks of the need to "develop and dominate nuclear technology".

In any case it is not something that affects only this or that party: all Brazilian media is rallying around Lula on these matters and that is because it is a matter of highest national interest that goes beyond classes or political parties.

With a different viewpoint and emphasis on China's and Russia's discreet role on the Teheran agreement, it's worth mentioning Pepe Escobar's opinion at Asia Times Online, where he quotes the Chinese military genius Sun Tzu: Allow your enemy to make his own mistakes, and don't correct them. For Escobar, it is clear that the USA has made a great mistake by sabotaging this agreement so bluntly, what can only harm Washington's power and prestige (even more) and get it confronted with more and more regional powers, not just Brazil but also hyper-strategical and again self-confident Turkey and who knows what else.

Again it seems that, much like Charles V and his son Philip, the US Empire is embroiled, more often than not willingly, in way too many fronts, wasting precious economical resources in a megalomaniac attempt to control the whole World in a self-defeating strategy of total global domination (as defined by Brezinsky and camarilla) that is even more absurd now that it was in the 16th century. Because now we know that total control is plainly impossible, a mere error of imperfect and too arrogant thought.

See also: The geopolitics of today (or 'BRICs are heavy'), for a broader analysis at Leherensuge, and this other analysis by Raúl Zibechi at Voltaire Net, this time in English.

Archaeology versus some bad Genetics

I just stumbled upon a somewhat old but very interesting article on why population genetics has gone mad and leaned towards Neolithic replacement against all archaeological evidence. Why? Because they never cared at all about the archaeological evidence, not even about the genetic evidence that contradicted their own conclusions: they have been acting ideological all this time. Sadly enough.

Mark Pluciennik, Clash of Cultures? Archaeology and Genetics. Documenta Praehistorica 2006. Freely available PDF.

Worth a read, really.

Police commanders to jail for G8 Genoa assault and killing

Now and then we get some good news for a change. Sadly some of these good news seem to be hidden by the mainstream Imperial media and we have to look at alternative sources to get to know them.

This is the case of the sentence against 25 police officers who lead or took part in the 2001 assault against a school in Genoa that was the base of a group of nonviolent protesters against the G8 summit that year and participants in the alternative Genoa Social Forum held simultaneously in the same location.

The trial revokes a previous sentence from 2004 that only condemned some of the police agents involved in situ but acquainted the whole command chain that gave the orders, sentencing them to a total of 85 years of prison for falsification in second degree (they introduced explosives in the school) and severe injuries (one of the victims died, many others were seriously harmed).

The sentence is still under what the state attorneys demanded: a total of 110 years. However this is not the official position of the government that has declared its support for the attackers.

Sources:
· Diagonal Aragón (in Spanish)
· Processi G8 (in Italian)

USA seems set to attack Iran

The last few days have left us with a spat of contradictory news on the conflict around Iran and its nuclear ambitions. First Brazil and Turkey managed to strike a deal that was tailored to US demands so far on this matter and which counted with the support of Russia, a key UN security council veto-holding power and a major nuclear power itself. The US reaction however has been very hostile, claiming that they had already reached an agreement with Russia and China on further sanctions, including intercepting ships sailing to/from Iran in search of nuclear fuel or components.

They pretext that the agreement comes six months late and that Iran does not renounce to regular uranium enriching, which it is entitled to by the NPT, but the obvious reasons are that the USA wants to increase and not decrease the tension with Iran, in line with what their Zionist masters (the only nuclear power of the region) demand and, also, that it wants to trample the diplomatic movements of Brazil (already under US factual siege in Latin America), Turkey (becoming too independent for Washington's and Tel Aviv's likes) and Russia.

This new block of sanctions proposed by the USA are all but an open declaration of war, because the bulk of the naval intervention would fall to US/NATO hands, who are the interested party and who have a whole fleet in the area.

If Washington's position prevails (and so far it usually does), we should expect rapid escalation towards open war. While the USA is unlikely to occupy Iran right away (too costly and too likely to backfire), a terrible protracted unequal conflict, similar to the situation that Iraq was subjected to in the 1990s and early 2000s of total blockade, takeover of airspace and calculated bombings, is the most likely outcome. If the fundamentalist regime does not fall to that, then outright war is also within the possibilities but probably at a later moment, just like happened in Iraq under Bush Jr.

At the moment the UN security council is made up mostly of US satellites (UK, France, Austria, Japan, Mexico, Gabon, Nigeria, Uganda, Bosnia-Herzegovina), what makes the possibility of defeating US proposals by regular vote something almost unthinkable. This leaves Russia and China, who have the right of veto, as the key players.

China, maybe more concerned right now on what is happening at its own borders (Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Thailand, Korea), has not yet said a word. So Russia seems the most crucial player in this standoff. It's not a comfortable position considering how strong are Zionist interests in Russia too but, as of late, Russia has acted with determination and success against Zionist plans in Georgia, is gaining influence in West Asia (Syria, Turkey and of course cornered Iran).

Clinton has said that they had already persuaded Russia and China to back up their new sanctions package but Russia has spoken with ambiguous words backing the Brazil-Turkey bartered deal.

It's difficult to understand all clues in this complex multilateral situation but I'd say that Russia needs to back up Turkey specially, which is clearly sliding away from US influence, and does not want in any case yet another US engineered war in its West Asian backyard. Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia are already more than enough. I imagine that, unless the USA offers a lot (something like Taiwan), the interest of China is also to back Russia, Iran, Turkey and Brazil in the UN. China, deeply concerned about its own access to West Asian oil resources, does not want more US military buildup in the Persian Gulf.

On the other hand, US attitude is clearly set up for a remake of the Iraq blockade, eventually leading to an outright invasion. This is totally consistent with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the rallying of friendly Arab dictatorships into its military alliance system and the government change and potential disintegration of Pakistan. Ideally, for the Pentagon and the White House (and of course for AIPAC, J-street and all the Zionist International), all the area should become submissive to the USA (and Israel), furthering the grip not just in Arab/Muslim nationalist ambitions but also on the access to resources of rising star China and setting advanced positions closer to the soft belly of Russia: Central Asia.

Of course, neutralizing the initiative of free-thinker powers such as Brazil and Turkey is also part of the plan. So, in the best case, expect the new deal to be boycotted by the USA and never gain the seal of approval of the UN Security Council, keeping the situation as it is: an active siege of Iran.

References:
· Thierry Meissan, Strategy Shift in the Middle East (Voltaire Net)
· BBC: Iran hit by fresh UN nuclear sanctions threat
· Al Jazeera: Brazil criticises USA over Iran

Breaking the seals of Life

The future is today. And that does not only applies to economics, Keynesian or purely Liberal, but also to technology, obviously.

But this technology is a bit too daunting, I fear. Making life out of four bottles of chemicals (sic) really hits hard on our sense of life, existence and even triggers instincts of self-preservation, an imprecise but deep fear.

The sensation is that a cosmic seal has been broken, that this door should never have been opened.

But of course rationality steps in and reminds that after all it is something that would have happened sooner than later. That this is what intelligence and knowledge carry with them. That Nature has been doing exactly that forever and that therefore it can be considered a precious gift from our mother: the ability to manipulate her very matrix.

The fear is after all one of acknowledging that the child, Humankind, is not mature enough for such a power, that it will most probably misuse it, causing much grief and maybe self-destruction.

But that's how things are. We don't get gifts from Nature anymore, we open our path quite ruthlessly through her secrets and guess that's alright for her, as long as it guarantees our survival... and if it does not, this other extinction, ours, will only make Mother Nature stronger in the long run anyhow.

The case, you may know by now, is that US researchers have managed to create bacterial DNA from scratch, insert it into a DNA depleted cell and get it to live and reproduce. They have created life out from scratch.

The same team, J. Craig Venter and his Institute managed to create a virus from scratch in 2003 and had already synthesized the bacterial genome from mere computer programs and chemicals in 2008 but then they failed to get it to work.

Considering the speed of research of this biotechnology, I can estimate that full human beings may be ready by 2050. Let's see: amoebas by 2017, simple multicellular beings (coral or fungus) by 2024, simple plants and animals by 2031, complex animals by 2038, humans by 2045.

What then? I can imagine the likes of Monsanto patenting brand new species of plants in few decades, animals soon later and then even, who knows?, artificial humanoids to serve as slaves or whatever.

Scary? Pretty much, I'd say.

More details on this shocking advance at:

· J. Craig Venter Institute
· The Guardian
· Science Daily

... and probably in most of your usual news sites.

Connection between high creativity and schizophrenia found

It's all about a filter we have in our heads, it seems: the thalamus. What schizophrenics and healthy highly creative people share is low density of dopamine receptors in the thalamus, which act as filter for incoming information. Normal people have many more of such dopamine receptors, filtering a lot of inputs and are hence less sensible but also more stable. Highly creative people and schizophrenics have less and hence filter little, what makes their brains to process much more information for good or bad.

Örjan de Manzano et al., Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box: Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related to Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Individuals. PLoS ONE 2010. Open access.

Also discussed at Science Daily.

It is interesting because it gives some adaptative meaning to the genetics and epigenetics behind schizophrenia, as being highly creative is surely an adaptative trait.

I wonder if it offers some hope of treating schizophrenia by positivizing this attribute instead of mere chemical straight jackets, that is all psychiatrists can offer now. I've just seen too many lives ruined by this plague and the horribly arrogant and highly inefficient psychiatric handling of it.

It is also interesting because in the latest paper on Neanderthal genetics (Green 2010), they have found that some of the genetic regions exclusive to our species, H. sapiens, are related with mental conditions such as schizophrenia and autism, suggesting that maybe these traits offer also great potential rather than just a handicap (in which case they would have been selected against long ago, I presume).

Atapuerca experts: Neanderthals diverged one million years ago

Atapuerca researchers Aida Gómez and María Martinón have declared to Spanish newspaper Público that the material evidence from fossils clearly tell of a divergence time of c. 1 Ma., what strongly contradicts the short chronology proposed in a section of Green 2010 (but itself contradicted in the paper by another estimate of 850 Ka, more realistic).

Martinón says that the [proto-]Neanderthals who lived some 600,000 years at Atapuerca were already a different species from Homo sapiens. This makes impossible that their last common ancestor lived only 300,000 years ago, as the Neanderthal Genome project proposes. The teeth of other homins from the Gran Dolina of Atapuerca, from 900,000 years ago, already presented traits making them more Neanderthal than Sapiens, adds Gómez.

Source: Público.

Reference research: Aida Gómez Robles et al., Geometric morphometric analysis of the crown morphology of the lower first premolar of hominins, with special attention to Pleistocene Homo. Journal of Human Evolution 2008. Pay per view.

New paper on Mediterranean genetics

We have a new free interesting paper by researchers of the Universitat de Barcelona on the issue of the Mediterranean partial barrier to genetic flow:

G. Athaniasadis et al., The Mediterranean Sea as a barrier to gene flow: evidence from variation in and around the F7 and F12 genomic regions. BMC Evolutionary Biology 2010. Open access.

The F7 and F12 genomic regions refer to a diverse set of neutral and functional polymorphisms located in and around the coagulation factor VII and XII genomic regions (F7 and F12).

Conclusions

As there is no consensus between the two genomic regions regarding gene flow through the Sahara, it is hard to reach a solid conclusion about its role in the differentiation between the two Mediterranean shores and more data are necessary to reach a definite conclusion. However our data suggest that the Mediterranean Sea was at least partially a barrier to gene flow between the two shores.

They compared a set of diverse populations from North West Africa, Iberia and Occitania (South France) and the Aegean area, using also samples from Ivory Coast and Bolivian natives as outgroups.

As the authors admit some uncertainty remains at not sampling some important Mediterranean regions. They mention Italy and the Adriatic but I'd say that a study like this would benefit from including mainland Greeks, other West Asians (Levant specially) and Egyptians, as well as some NW European outgroups (Scottish?).

I do welcome anyhow the sampling of Occitans, a much needed comparison from the viewpoint of Basque and Iberian genetics in particular.

From the study I have selected this PC graph (above) as most representative of their conclusions (fig. 3C). As I like to do, I have made some annotations in various colors: in red locations of the samples (so you don't have to check fig. 1 all the time), in gray the PC axes, in blue their possible meaning (my best hunch).

I have also marked two rather tight clusters (High Atlas and Pyrenees), both with a marked tendency to one pole of the PC2 axis, and two less clearly defined ones (Other North Africans and a mish-mash of Andalusians, Occitans and Cretans).

The High Atlas (or South-SE Moroccan) cluster is the most neatly distinct of all and shows very strong tendency in both PC axes. The African tendency (-PC1)>

The Pyrenean (or North-NE Iberian) cluster shares the same characteristics but with a clear European tendency instead of an African one.

The 'Other North African' cluster is really loose and is only defined because of the differences to the rest of groups, which should have been relativized if Egyptian and Levant samples would have been included most probably. Notice that the +PC2 pole, that I have dubbed 'Neolithic' just indicates an apparent more West Asian tendency, which might or not be Neolithic as such.

The Andalusia-Toulouse-Crete cluster is probably an artifact caused by their neutrality in the West Europe-West Asia (Paleo-Neolithic) axis rather than a true clustering. In any case, the clustering of the Cretan sample with SW Europeans is consistent in all three PC graphs what suggests that, at least in this aspect, Cretans are not so close to Anatolians as geography, history and haploid genetics suggests.

Also, the position of Asturians is very noticeable because they do not cluster at all with Pyrenean peoples but rather seem intermediate between the SW Europeans with a more Medeiterranean tendency (Andalusians, Occitans) and the Turkish sample. Knowing that in other markers, such as Y-DNA, Asturias tends to cluster with other West Iberian regions (Galicia, Leon, Portugal, Extremadura) one wonders if there was demic replacement in that country and, if so, when did it happen. Because it is something that is not obvious at all in the archaeological nor the historical records.

Some archeological news

Stone pages' Archaeo News bulletin is back to normality and I think these items are worth mentioning:

• England: discovered cairn complex at Otley, Yorkshire. More at The Northern Antiquarian.
• Australia: ongoing research at Kimberley hopes to find clues of earliest inhabitants. More at The Australian.
• USA: underwater black chert source at North Carolina suggest coastal migration of Paleo-Indians. More at Star News.
  
• Oman: a 5000 years old cemetery. More at Gulf Times.
• Bahrain: Dilmun culture's burial mounds will be researched before massive development destroys them. More at Gulf Daily.
• India: stone circles' complex largely destroyed in development at Thiruporur, Tamil Nadu. More at the Megalithic Portal (another reference site).

One of the surviving stone circles of Thiruporur (from the Megalithic Portal)

You can discuss these news and much more at Stone Pages' forums.

Red is the color of the decade

A beautiful picture I just found at Ciudad Futura. From Athens, last Saturday.

Nakba: 62 years and still...

Surely one can write forever on this genocide but one can also for a change merely held respectful silence for the victims without reparation, for the victims of Zionist terror that still claim for return and that are still being murdered by the same arrogant criminal gang.

The natives of what is now insultingly called Israel, dumped by their enemies in the Gaza Strip, display their hope in that key, the key of what was once their home (photo from Gara).

Justice when? There cannot be peace without return, without civil rights, without democracy.

Zionists go home!

Free Gaza campaign set to breach Zionist blockade again

A 1200 ton cargo ship, named VM Rachel Corrie for the US human rights activist murdered by Israel in 2003 left Ireland on Friday to join the other ships of the Freedom Flotilla at the Eastern Mediterranean.

The flotilla carries construction materials, medical equipment and school supplies, all much needed in the concentration camp and all forbidden by Israel to enter it.

The terrorist state of Israel is making clear signs that it won't allow the ships, which won't ever enter Israeli waters, to reach Gaza, which has been subject to a genocidal blockade by Israel and its Egyptian vassal, under the shameful indifference of the "international community".

More information at Free Gaza.

Zionist and Popists control the USA

The people of the USA made a revolution of sorts some 240 years ago... but since then they have been very sheepish, specially since Hollywood and such became a feature. That means that the system works (or used to), no doubt: people are brainwashed and fed and there's absolutely no room for political dissidence, which is dubbed "anti-Americanism" and either ghettoed or jailed.

Panem et circensis. If it worked for the Roman oligarchs, why not now? But unlike in Rome, for whom the word "socialism" meant nothing, in this Empire the price of bread, opium and mass entertainment keeps going up...

Worse: after the criminal abuses of Bush Jr. and camarilla, including a self-inflicted murderous attack against US soil in 2001 to rally the masses around the Imperial-Zionist war project, a lot of people was really fed up. Most of them got alligned with Obama, who offered "hope", "change" and a fresh face and discourse.

But the US political system, as all the others in the West, is designed for change not to be possible and for politicians to be mere puppets of the corporations, who control the media and the parties and nearly everything else.

This status quo in favor of a handful of oligarchs was ratified by the Supreme Court recently, giving corporations civil rights that mean that as "virtual persons" they can contribute money to politics (bribe politicians more effectivey and officially) just like any other John Doe.

In essence all the political machinery is in the hands of corporations, regardless of whether this or that party or politician rules.

This of course means that they are in the hands of the political agents that control corporations, notably the Zionist International but also other such hierarchies as the Opus Dei, a Catholic order conceived as a brainwashing cult for profit and that has controlled the authoritarian and obscurantist Church of Rome for the last many many decades, since Karol Wojtila rose to the throne of Peter.

Obama is not different: his 'change' is nowhere to be seen (no plan for Guantamo's closure, a government full of rabid Zionists like Rahm Emmanuel, support for terrorist regimes like the ones in Mexico, Colombia and Honduras, not to mention Israel), the 'hope' he managed to sell is vanishing like a bad headache.

I say all this because I was reading yesterday to James Petras on the appointment of Elena Kagan, a totally grey unexperienced attorney but with the right Zionist connections, to the Supreme Court of the North American republic. It's something very much unbelievable if you think on it: such a powerful and alegedly prestigious organ as the Supreme Court filled with carpetbaggers of a foreign lobby? What has become of the proud republic?

I fear that the answer is: a mere puppet of multinational corporative power, no mater who is in charge.

Kagan with her mentors (from the Spanish version of the article at La Haine)

One detail that Petras insists on is the fact that of the 9 members of this Supreme Court, there is not one who is not Catholic or Jewish. Six Catholics and three Jews in a nation that is mostly Protestant and where Jews represent barely 2% of the population (but about 50% of the wealthy and powerful). Where are the Protestant judges? Where are the agnostic judges? The Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim judges?

They just don't seem to exist. Surely some of those had much more brillian careers than Kagan (not difficult, really) but they seem to lack the right connections to climb the ladder.

As Petras says, this smells to barn. You could say I am just bitching (sure I am, why not?) but it's more serious than that: it means that the system, which should represent the people of the USA is not working as it should. The people have become just an amorphous mass to be rallied by the media at election campaigns and not anymore any real actor of US politics. The twin-single-party system does not allow for any dissidence to be articulated in a way that has the slightest chance within the system. Many of those genuine believers in democracy were rallied after Obama in the last election, they even created a short-lived popular movement of sorts... but what is left of that? You put all your hopes in a man who later betrays them for some unspeakable interest such as Zionism.

And then what? Despair.

Where's the grassroots movement that rallied behind the Obama illussion? Why are not them demanding their "leader" and Congress to fulfill their promises? Is a downgraded healthcare system all they could hope for? Is this what they fought for?

I doubt it.