Pentagon burns all copies of revealing 9/11 book

From Alexander Higgins Blog, originally from Fox News.

In a most incredible, yet real, move, the US Department of Defense has purchased and then burnt all copies from a book on 9/11, revealing uncomfortable facts such as the USA knowing about Mohammed Atta (the alleged leader of the attacks) and having him under surveillance as a security threat long before 9/11 (and yet allowing him to live freely in the USA).

The Pentagon had first authorized the book by reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, titled Operation Dark Heart, but then realized they had committed and error, as, allegedly, it contains secret information that hurts "national security".

Specifically, the DIA wanted references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book's author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. In that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Shaffer alleges the commission was told about "Able Danger" and the identification of Atta before the attacks. No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 report.

Shaffer, who was undercover at the time, said there was "stunned silence" at the meeting after he told the executive director of the commission and others that Atta was identified as early as 2000 by "Able Danger."

Dr. Philip Zelikow approached me in the corner of the room. 'What you said today is very important. I need you to get in touch with me as soon as you return from your deployment here in Afghanistan'," Shaffer said.

Once back in the U.S., Shaffer says he contacted the commission. Without explanation, the commission was no longer interested. An inspector general report by the Department of Defense concluded there was no evidence to support the claims of Shaffer and others. But Fox News has obtained an unredacted copy of the IG report containing the names of witnesses, who backed up Shaffer's story when contacted for comment.

As I commented at AHB: I’d say that impressively stupid because how do they think they can block info from flowing unless they close the Internet down (which in turn would only cause them to effective lose the little control they may have on the Internet, as other countries would soon push their own versions to fill in the void).

I think that this essentially shows that the whole mentality behind the 9/11 operation and all that is antiquated: it belongs, as its ringleaders (all them members of the Nixon-Ford administration), to the pre-Internet age and that’s why is doomed. Not that in the past information would not flow but was slower and less exuberant, allowing a lot greater control by the governments and media corporations.


Related news: rumor of domestic military deployment of US troops, possibly, Tuesday.

Not sure what to make of this but it does sound quite alarming. According to a YouTube video by SmokinJoeTrainer, he has received several confidential reports from trusted friends in the army being called for domestic deployment by the end of the weekend. It's just an unconfirmed rumor so far but watch it out.




Source: Alexander Higgins Blog.

ZERO, An Investigation Into 911 (documentary film)

You just must watch this film. A genuine research on 9/11, you just cannot still believe the official version after watching this. If you don't have time, watch at least the first bloc, which deals with the Twin Towers.

A version doubled to Spanish (single video, duration: 1 hour 45 min.) can be found at Vimeo.


World Trade Center (Twin Towers)

How three huge buildings collapsed in free fall in what cannot be but controlled demolitions with military grade explosives.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3




The Pentagon

How the best defended military zone on Earth was breached, how an amateur pilot made impossible acrobatics with a huge passenger plane and how the airplane made a tiny hole and was nowhere to be found. How the defense protocols were changed right before and after 9/11 by Donald Rumsfeld himself and how all the relevant command chain was altered for the event and how all these ad hoc commanders got promoted and not punished for their failure.

Part 4



Part 5



Part 6




The terrorists

Who are they? Who are Mohammed Atta, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda? Who pays them? Did they do anything other than serve as decoy?

Part 7



Part 8



Part 9




The investigation

Or lack of it thereof. And the frustration of the victims about this big lie.

Part 10



Part 11



Italian production. Credits in the last video.

Appendix: complementary information

1. Thermal camera film of the Twin Towers before they were demolished ("collapsed"). The scale at the left margin, allows us to estimate temperatures as not higher than 100 degrees Celsius, which is way too low to melt steel. While there are fires in the impact areas, the rest of the buildings are at ambient temperature, so much that they can't be seen when no fire is in the frame:



2. A new video from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth explaining some important details on the demolition of Tower 1:

3. Interview with Kurt Sonnefeld, former high ranking FEMA official who filmed Ground Zero after the attacks and who is now exiled in Argentina. Text format at Voltaire Net.

Update (Sep 12): Press conference by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Full press conference available at Archive.org.

Key part with detailed scientific exposition of why they find the official hypothesis clearly false and the demolition hypothesis absolutely confirmed and also announces the formation of Scientists for 9/11 Truth and Military Officers for 9/11 Truth:

9/11 nine years on

Washington Blog has a lengthy list of "old" news telling of important people (members of the official 9/11 commission, senior intelligence officers, congressmen and other government officials) strongly doubting the official version on the attacks and denouncing the cover-up around this key event of recent history, of ongoing history.

This should be enough almost anywhere to have a ongoing national debate on the authorship and real goals of the attack. It should be enough certainly to consider that the inside-job theory is pretty much mainstream.

But the media is being gagged in this as in many other key issues, ranging from Israel to the Louisiana oil spill catastrophe. One wonders what media that cannot be critical with the authorities is worth for... and the obvious answer is: mere propaganda and mass brainwashing.

And without the media echoing the alternative versions of what was in fact 9/11 and thoughtlessly repeating once and again the official and obviously false version of the events, a lot of people can still keep their blind faith in the system and the authorities.

Lincoln seems to have said that "you can't fool everybody forever" but the Cheney-Rumsfeld school of imperial ruling seems to think that it's enough if you can fool most for a few decades. And for that they have the unbelievably sheepishly or coerced consent of the media, every day concentrated in less and less hands, and hence every day less and less free.

But it's not just the usual media, I knew recently that the most relevant person (of a small camarilla) controlling that the Wikipedia article on the September 11 attacks, someone known as MONGO, works for the US Department of Homeland Security, issue that was "resolved" by declaring he has no "conflict of interest" whatsoever. This kind of manipulations and lack of justice and balance and even the difficulty to speak the truth if it happens to be "unpolite" was what brought me out of collaborating with Wikipedia anymore. Obviously there needs to be new wikipedias because the extant one cannot be neutral, just institutionalist.

This is nothing new, really, and it means that the attack on freedom of speech and truthful information has also arrived to the Internet and did in fact some time ago. But it brings me to what do I understand 9/11 was and is: a coup d'êtat.


The 9/11 coup

In this cases, when there is any doubt, it is always good asking qui bono?: whom does this benefit?

I had doubts right that fatal day. As I watched avidly the news, as did nearly everybody on Earth, I realized that there were very odd contradictions regarding the figure of Mohammed Atta, the supposed leader of the attacks, who allegedly died in one of the planes. On one side the German secret service, BND, famed for its seriousness and efficiency, claimed that they had watched Atta in Hamburg and were certain he was not any Taliban nor member of Al Qaeda but actually a member of the insurgent Northern Alliance. His father then claimed from Egypt that he had talked with him after the attacks and that he was alright. Additionally I was surprised that the popular leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, had been just murdered on September 9, just two days before the attacks.

I became strongly suspicious and time and information has only made those suspicions grow to a clear understanding that what happened in 9/11 was an inside job. An inside job like no other I could think of, not just because of its dimension, but specially for its implications for the USA and its "Empire", and by extension the whole World.

I started to think that it was nothing but a coup. A coup intended to further institutionalize the Empire and specially a coup against freedoms and rights in the Western World.

Besides Afghanistan which was clearly in the equation when the macabre performance went off, and besides Iraq, which was soon included in the package (it seems that this was Rumsfeld's idea)... besides the Greater Middle East becoming this way an easier target for US-NATO imperialism, there are clear implications for the US and its global extensions. The implications are loss of civil rights and even residual democracy altogether, whose most infamous expression is the Patriot Act but that actually include a large array of fascist laws and directives duly implemented by the George Bush Jr. government but also now by Obama's, who has all the time not just avoided to discuss these extremist abuses by his predecessor but is actually using and expanding them.

The situation is not much better in Europe. Ten years ago the fascistoid attitudes of Berlusconi and Aznar were rather exceptional in my continent. Today they are totally "normal" (Sarkozy for instance, Berlusconi is not anymore snubbed...) and the diffuse dream of a united democratic Europe that existed then has totally waned, as the constitution was imposed by the bureaucracies and EU has now become a mere secretariat for the corporations and NATO. You still do not see many of the involutionary extremes that happen in the USA but it's clear that the EU will follow the USA to hell if demanded as the lapdog it is. Any dream of reorganizing EU as an independent power in the wake of the Cold War has vanished.

But maybe most important is the growing role of the imperial military and corporative superstructure across borders and oceans. Probably the coup really means to create a real Empire, gradually maybe but steadily in any case. And for that civil liberties and freedom of speech must be curtailed and brought under control.

Whatever structures are to exist in an Empire they must be not really democratic. Some formal or consultative democracy and also local subordinated democracy can be tolerated but the structure is designed for the oligarchs, not the common people, so it does not matter too much what these think.

Besides there is no real need for the human rights, democratic and welfare decorations to exist anymore now that the Soviet threat has been annihilated. Earlier it was maybe necessary in order for people not jump the Berlin Wall in the "wrong direction" but now it is superfluous. Triumphant Capitalism can now show itself naked even if ugly and scary. This display of terrifying ugliness is, according to George Orwell, one of the characteristics of totalitarianism, of bullies: I am ugly but you don't dare to laugh at me.

So the oligarchs can now get rid of all those extras, those crumbs they used to throw to their subjects in order to keep them content. 9/11 served, by creating a mass panic to "terrorism" to introduce all kind of abuses and totalitarian laws, specially in the USA but not only.


The perfect foe: Islamic Fundamentalism

Also, the new sock-puppet enemy, Islamic Fundamentalism, a creation of the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia essentially anyhow, is the perfect foe. As the ghetto ideology and as the reactionary ideology it is, it poses no significant threat of expansion, unlike Communism, and can be used in a wide and strategic but limited area of the World to pit factions against factions in the usual policy of divide et impera. For these geopolitical engineers, who may have some evil genius after all, the whole Muslim World is a petri dish with very special conditions and Islamic Fundamentalism is a bacterial culture they are experimenting with. Experimenting with in order to cause panic and in order to get pretexts for imperialist interventions of all sorts.

And it is also intended to cause confusion in the ideological sphere, because, since 9/11 util very recently, the debate, which still was about Capitalism and Socialism, has been hijacked by a pseudo-debate on religion and culture on which little can be said other than I like or I don't like this or that. It has been hijacked in the Muslim World, where it has been used to promote reaction, and it has been hijacked in the West, where it has been used to promote reaction as well.

In depth, both sides of the Fundamentalist false debate agree: let's fight, and let's bring our peoples back to the Dark Ages, be them Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu... but Dark Ages in any case. There is absolutely nobody arguing for human progress and human freedom in this false debate, just for "join us" and "hate them". The goal is to kill illustration and democracy so the oligarchs can reign unopposed.

It is a coup with very deep and very evil intent.

I could continue but it is not my intention to write a book, so I'll stop here.


Further resources on why 9/11 was an inside job and its implications:

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, specially the Evidence section. [Update: their evidence presentation today has attracted some media attention: Yahoo News, Forbes and other agencies and media echo it].

Pilots for 9/11 Truth.

Voltaire Net: Themes: September 11th, 2001

Global Research: 9/11 and "War on Terrorism"

The evidence for a controlled demolition of both Twin Towers and building 7 (not hit by any airplane or anything but key for the plot) is overwhelming. Other counter-evidence is pretty strong as well. The official version is a huge lie.

Basque author on trial in Chile for supporting Mapuche struggle

Basque writer Asel Luzarraga was arrested in December 31 2009 while making a graffiti in solidarity with the Mapuche struggle for land and self-rule. He was accused of "terrorism", specifically of planting two bombs in Temuko in December 2009, one of them when he was not in Chile and the other (not exploded) the very same day of his arrest.

In spite of the severity of the accusations he has been under home arrest (while simultaneously an order of expulsion has been issued as well).

There seems to no grounds whatsoever for the accusation other than being anarchist, solidarious with the Mapuche cause and possibly being Basque. There was a newspaper cartoon the other day that read: "everybody is innocent until proven Basque", funny maybe but way too real.

However the trial begins today.

Meanwhile the Mapuche struggle continues. Prisoners have been in hunger strike for many weeks already and are being force-fed by the authorities. Some may die soon. Mostly this struggle has gone unnoticed in the media, even in Chile itself. And that may be because, as Atilio Boron said, the Mapuches are not Cubans. Can you imagine anything like this happening in Cuba and not being first page in all the international media?

Well, if it happens in Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Morocco or Spain... it seems it is not news-worthy.

Boycott day at Bilbao Fiestas

As mentioned yesterday, wednesday was a journey of protest for freedom of speech and the participative popular model of fiestas, against the persecution of ideas and konpartsak by the authorities, be them remotely located at Madrid or nearby at the local Town Hall.

The konpartsak made a massive concentration at the Town Hall:


They also parodied the mayor, who has not only be as weak and treacherous as to accept the imposition of the Spanish flag but who is also actively cooperating with the repressive policies designed by the Spaniards:


Source: Gara (link 1, link 2)

Child soldier's confession under torture is legal evidence for USA

The outrageous case of Guantanamo Nazi prison, which has not yet been dismantled by Barack Obama in spite of his electoral promises, goes one step further as Omar Khadr is going to face a farce trial under his military captors who took him from Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

The accusation, for which he could face a life sentence, is to throw a grenade killing a US soldier, in the context of the US/NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, of more than questionable legitimacy itself.

The only evidence: his own confession, obtained under the system of torture that is well known to operate in the colonial base in Cuba.

Under international law, child soldiers are to be considered victims.

Under any sensible law as well, confession obtained under tortures or possible tortures cannot be evidence. Otherwise it is going back to the times of the Inquisition.

However the military tribunal that is to judge Omar Khadr has accepted this only piece of "evidence" as valid. Khadr is however still hopeful that justice will prevail and rejects to enter a plea bargain.

The young Omar Khadr, now 23, has seen some of the best years of his life wasted in one of the worst prisons on Earth.

While he initially cooperated with his captors, he is now set not to accept the impositions of the farce trial and may even dismiss his military attorney out of lack of faith on the system.

The world doesn't get it, so it might work if the world sees the US sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process is. And if the world doesn't see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate ... and discrimination.

I hate to say this but he is damn right. It may cost him dearly but it is on this kind of fearless heroism that justice is built upon.

Source: Al Jazeera


____________

Update (Aug 13): Daphne Eviatar reports at the Huffington Post on the first day of the farce-trial which was suspended indefinitely (or for 30 days, not fully clear) after the defense lawyer suddenly collapsed while interrogating a witness.

It is interesting the report on the actual facts that seem to transpire in the trial: Omar Khadr was not just a minor at the time of the alleged "crime" (fighting in a war, defending his country from a foreign invasion if anything) but there is absolutely no evidence that he even fought at all. There are reports that the person who threw the grenade, killing a US soldier, was someone else and that Khadr did not even participate in the combat at all, where he had been brought by his father in a clear case of parental coercion.

They also report that he was shot in the back twice in spite of being unarmed, (i.e. a civilian minor) surviving almost miraculously. Daphne Eviatar asks: who is the real war criminal here?

Political trial against town councilors' association: no right to defense

The trial against the Basque elected councilors' organization Udalbiltza (from 'udal': municipal government and 'biltza(tu)': to gather) is set to begin at Madrid next July 15.

22 people, including 15 former councilors and four former mayors, stand accused of "membership in ETA" and "misuse of public funds" in yet another instance of political trial under the doctrine that "all is ETA".

Yesterday the accused denounced that their right to defense has been radically constricted, with the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (alias the Inquisition) denying all documentary evidence and most of the 140 witnesses of the defense.

Among the witnesses rejected by the infamous tribunal are former US senator Pete Cenarruza, Verena Graf, secretary general of the League for the Rights and Liberation of the Peoples, Scottish MP Lloyd Quinan and the vice-president of the Sami Parliament Johan Mikkel Sara, Irish priest Alec Reid and representatives of the Euskal Etxeak (Basque associations) from several American countries, all of which had relations with the organization.

Also witnesses from various parties who took part in the formation of Udalbiltza, who could explain how the organization was created on plural and representative basis in 1999, before it split in two, have been rejected. Similarly, none of the representatives of the many social agents that collaborated with Udalbiltza has been admitted as witness. These included the Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia), Basque language schools' associations, Basque language adult literacy network AEK, the Basque Association of Climatology and Meteorology, etc.

Other rejected witnesses are representatives of Zuberoa Garatzen, the Northern Basque association for the development of Zuberoa (Soule), which was the destinatary of most of those "misused" public funds. Nor have been accepted as witnesses Basque intellectuals and artists who would have explained why the Basque Identity Card (EHNA) was promoted.

Additionally, the Spanish political court has not admitted even one of the 165 documentary proofs of the defense and has rejected to order two legal assessments which would have been elaborated by academics on "antecedents and processes of creation of supra-municipal organization and trans-border collaboration in the Basque Country" and "questions on the Consortium and Udalbiltza".

Essentially the accused have been denied all their defense, with only 20 witnesses being accepted.

Udalbiltza was formed in 1999 by Basque municipal elects (councilors and mayors) on voluntary basis and originally included all representatives from the various nationalist parties, which represent a clear majority in the country. Some time later, the divergences between the two main blocs led to its division. In 2003, in the post-9/11 fever of "war on terror", which in Spain meant a madness of legal and judicial interventions against Basque social and political life, under the doctrine of "all is ETA", the remaining active Udalbiltza was indicted. Seven years later, the trial is finally to take place with no guarantees whatsoever.

Source: Gara.

Update (Jul 9): A Platform of Solidarity with the Accused in the Udalbiltza Case has been formed in Madrid, Spain, report La Haine and Nodo50.

Also, if you can read Spanish, you can find more info in this ad-hoc blog.

Spanish Inquisition: one step further.

Elected representatives will now, in the legal jurisdiction of Spain, be suspended if they don't parrot with enough vehemence the institutional doctrine promoted by the two official (and almost identical) parties: PP and PSOE.

According to the new wording of the electoral law, just approved by the Constitutional Commission of the Spanish Parliament, representatives elected in any list that is declared illegal after the elections will be suspended. The only way to avoid this suspension would be to repeat constantly the ritual words "terrorists" and "I condemn".

By the letter the popular representatives must formulate "voluntarily" before the "Electoral Administration" in the term of 15 days "an express and doubtless declaration of separation and rejection of the causes determining the declaration of illegality" of his/her list.

This however is not enough: the "lucky" representative will be placed under constant scrutiny and can be suspended at any time if "by act, omission or manifestation" he/she "would show contradiction" with the written declaration.

This process will happen by mere administrative procedure, with no judicial guarantees whatsoever.

Source: Gara.

It is of course a law intended primarily to prohibit one of the largest Basque political factions from having any institutional representation whatsoever under any circumstances but these McCarthyist laws are ample enough to allow the illegalization and persecution of anyone who dares to have different opinions, be them Basque or Spanish.

Furthermore, we must not forget that the Spanish "anti-terrorist" hysteria has been plagiarized by the USA and its empire since 2001. The same that Spain allowed the massacre of Hipercor to happen, the USA allowed 9/11 (if it did not directly engineer it), only to spark mediatic hysteria and rally the people around the Capitalist governments and their repressive policies in what I could not describe but as a de-facto coup against democracy, as it has allowed for further restrictions of human rights and civic freedoms everywhere, impelling almost total police control of the citizenship. All things that would have been unthinkable without this carefully engineered hysteria.

So beware, because it'd be not the first time that a "brilliant" Spanish idea like this would be copied worlwide.

Regarding the Basque political situation it can only make more difficult any path to peace. We must remember that ETA has been in an unspoken but real unilateral truce since more than a year ago and that the Basque Nationalist Left has repeteadly declared its will to achieve independence by peaceful and democratic means, yet the State only responds with more repression.

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.

Morong 43: health professionals under the Inquisition in Philippines

There is today an interesting article at La Haine (in Spanish, an English version can be read here), by James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya, on the kind of Colombian-like violence and oligarchic terrorism that dominates the Filipino political landscape, where votes are forced by the means of institutional terror by a handful of feudal lords (and ladies, as President Macapagal).

A particular focus is the inquisitorial forgery of the case against 43 physicians and nurses that were arrested at a professional meeting in the locality of Morong, where they were discussing a plan for intervention in case of epidemic after the disaster caused by typhoon Ketsana.

They were rounded up and brought to a military camp where they were tortured. They are (gratuitously) accused of belonging to the guerrilla New People's Army.

The decane of the College of Physicians of the University of Philippines described the arrests, tortures and accusations as part of a pattern of terrorism against physicians comitted to the rural areas, where the situation is generally awful.

The issue has been covered in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet however the mainstream press has ignored the matter completely, because Gloria Macapagal and her terror regime are a key ally of the Empire in the area.

Oaxaca: death squads murder civilians

The Solidarity Caravan with the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico, was ambushed by death squads (UBISORT) that declared having the support of the governor, Ulises Ruiz. Two to five people killed.

These tragic and despicable events unfolded these last few days (May 28-30) as a popular caravan in solidarity with a besieged free municipality in the southern Mexican state. The paramilitaries, masked and very young, attacked the caravan killing at least two people: Mexican human rights activist Beatriz 'Bety' Cariño and Finnish internationalist Jyri Antero Jaakkola. A group of activists and journalists had to seek refuge in the forest with some of their members injured. Others were kidnapped but eventually set free.

Bety Cariño was a veteran human rights activist and founding member of the Indigenous Communitarian Radio Network of SW Mexico.


Jyry Jaakola was a human rights obsever from Finland.

The autonomous (self-ruled) municipality of San Juan Copala has been in the last weeks besieged by police, troops and death squads, which have forced people to stay in their homes under effective death threat. Snippers of UBISORT watch the streets and can at any time murder anyone.

This is the most sad situation that the illegitimate government of the right wing PAN (which rigged the elections by all accounts) has brought to Mexico: militarization, death squads and mafia wars. This is the destiny for the US colonies in America or elsewhere (see Iraq or Afghanistan: not much difference).

But Mexico has an alternative: a growingly strong popular movement that will eventually turn the tides.

Sources: La Haine[es] (includes videos), Oaxaca en Pie de Lucha[es].

Update: photos of Basque demonstrations against the attacks of Oaxaca at La Haine now.

Switzerland: prison guards let a prisoner die laughing

From Rebelión[es].

The guards of the Swiss prison of Bochuz, Vaud, Switzerland, let a prisoner die after he had set fire to his mattress. For hours they ignored him, making insulting commentaries and clear statements in favor of letting him die. They even prevented a rescue team from accessing arguing they were too few to control the prison.

Even more painfully, the prisoner, Skander Vogt, aged just 30, had been sentenced in 1999 to only 20 months of prison for minor crimes but had been kept arrested on a clause of the Swiss law that allows indefinite prison for those estimated to "compromise public security". Go figure: sentenced to 20 months (here you would not even go to prison at all) and jailed for 11 years!

Vogt had in the past climbed once to the prison roof demanding a dentist because he had a terrible tooth ache and the prison would not provide him one. He was held in isolation and would not be allowed to leave his cell unless fully chained. His only consolation a radio had been conficated by prison authorities the day before he set fire to the mattress in protest.

They let him die laughing.

What kind of democracy is this? What happened to this person's most basic human rights?

Malalai Joya denounces occupation of Afghanistan

There is a very interesting interview at Voltaire Net with this Afghan MP who was suspended for her progressive views and opposition to imperialist occupation and talibanization under it.

Some excerpts follow:

The aim of the war was never to create democracy and justice nor to uproot the terrorist groups. The war’s only purpose has been to perpetuate the occupation, install military bases and safeguard the takeover of a region that has substantial natural resources.

...

Look at the UN bombardments. In May 2009 in my own province more than 150 civilians were killed.

...

The base text [of the Afghan Constitution] might very well declare equality between men and women but the country is ruled by Sharia law. The so-called democracy of the official Constitution is systematically flouted. It’s only there as a token to attract international aid, which is then usually embezzled.

Today Afghanistan is a country where women – often girls as young as 14 or 15 years – fleeing their conjugal home to escape extreme violence, are considered criminal and are imprisoned. Yes, there’s an increase in the number of girls returning to school, but the records don’t take into account the girls who have to leave school again, due to threats to their safety and pressure from their families to get married.

Suicide has become the ultimate weapon of desperate young women, who are aware that there are alternatives but know that they will never have the right to them.

...

All of the troops must leave and the militia of the warlords must be dismantled. Democracy can’t be established by an occupying force that does nothing more than spread out and strengthen the Talibanization of my country.

...

Democratic parties and associations are more often than not fighting in secret. Let’s not forget that the Constitution bans the existence of all non-religious parties whose frame of reference does not include the Qur’an.

...

There are so many faceless heroes and heroines. Their battle is in their towns and villages. Why does no single western leader recognise the existence of a progressive movement that could emerge and play a role?

Further anti-democratic reforms in Spain's law

The institutional two parties of Spain have agreed further reforms to the already outrageous Law of Political Parties that will make even more difficult that people with dissident opinions can run for political office in the European kingdom.

Particularly the new reforms would allow to:

1. Declare a party or list illegal already in the electoral campaign even if it fulfilled all the draconian ideological requirements to run.

2. Suspend elected representatives.

Source: Gara.


Spanish weakness and fear

The Basque Nationalist Left, which has recently insisted that they want to work democratically (originally , in the 1970s and 80s, they did not run but for local offices, considering all the rest of institutions illegitimate) has declared that it's nothing but weakness and fear to democratic confrontation what motivates these repressive laws.

Source: Gara.

Spanish judge feels threatened by anti-terrorist laws

Judge Manuel Díaz de Rábago, member of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country, appointed by the Spanish Judicial Power government organs at Madrid (not any autonomous court), declared to online judicial magazine Res Publica that:

ETA and the way the State reacts to it cause me, in these last years, some uncertainty on what can happen first to me: that ETA murders me or that the State accuses me of being part of ETA's structures. This reveals to me the madness of both in the persecution of their goals under the perverse logic of "everything is valid".

Judge Díaz de Rábago was, among others, in charge of the political trial against two Basque lehendakaris (autonomical presidents) and the spokesman of the Basque Nationalist Left, Arnaldo Otegi, accused of dialoguing with ETA (or with each other, not really sure, as it's all so Kafkian and absurd).

Originally a labor attorney, he was proposed as president of the regional court but only achieved nine votes (out of 20) at the Spanish General Council of the Judicial Power (organ appointed by the Spanish Parliament). The above declarations were made in reply to a question on his opinion on the Egunkaria case.

Source: Gara.

Italy: banana republic?

How to live in Italy and not to stumble upon Berlusconi?


What follows has no precise author (some attribute it to Stephano Benni) and has been circulating through the Internet with minimal variations. Now I translate it from a Spanish-language version found at Rebelión.


Hello. My name is A., I live at Milano 2, a building made by the Prime Minister.

I work at Milan, at a company whose main stockholder is the Prime Minister.

My car, that I use to go to work, is insured at a company also owned by the Prime Minister.

In the evening, I leave my workplace and go shopping to a supermarket of the Prime Minister, where I buy products manufactured in companies of the Prime Minister.

At night, I almost always watch the TV channels of the Prime Minister, where films (often produced by the Prime Minister) are interrupted with advertisements made by the publicity agency of the Prime Minister.

Then, I get bored and go to navigate a while through the Internet, using the server of the Prime Minister.

Particularly I watch the football results because I am a follower of the team of the Prime Minister.

Once a week or so I go to a cinema that belongs to a chain of the Prime Minister, where I watch a movie produced by the Prime Minister as well as the initial commercials made by the agency of the Prime Minister.

On Sundays I stay at home reading a book that is printed by a company of the Prime Minister.

Naturally, like in all democratic countries, also in Italy it is the Prime Minister who makes the laws, then sanctioned by a Parliament whose majority is in the hands of the Prime Minister.

Who, obviously, governs in MY best interest.


Update (Feb 11): another article now at Rebelión, reviews how Berlusconi rose to power with the full support of the Mafia and the old-school Christian-Democracy, itself closely knit to the Mafia since the time of the US occupation at the end of WWII. Matter that has been confirmed by several repented witnesses.

Spanish Inquisition decrees again that "all is ETA", hindering political ways

Spanish Audiencia Nacional judge Baltasar Garzón has decided to go ahead with the trial of eight leaders of the Basque Nationalist Left on grounds that they constitute the "Bateragune or Commission of Coordination or Direction" of the bloc, which, according to him and in spite of lacking any evidence, is an "organ of coordination, directed and controlled by ETA".

The judicial writ does not present any evidence even of the existence of such committee nor how would the armed group exert control over it, and in fact includes evidences of some of these politicians contradicting ETA in an effective manner. One of these Kafkian "evidences" is the document found in the office of Rafa Díez that states that "we have to overcome the phase of political-military confrontation that keeps us blocked and increases the erosion of the Basque National Liberation Movement".

Notably the super-judge now expands the notion of what can be criminalized to all the so-called Suzerainist Pole (i.e. all Basque nationalist forces), although by the moment he prefers to argue that the rest of parties and organizations that could be included under this tag were "deceived" and not structurally "part of ETA". This idea had never before been suggested anyhow and may mark an increase in repression (or at least the threat of it) against other independentist forces.

In fact, there are already rumors and movements against Eusko Alkartasuna (Basque Solidarity), which has been said by some Spanish nationalist politicians, that could loan its brand to the Nationalist Left, something that has been denied by the party.

Source: Gara.

Zionists arrest Mordechai Vanunu

Famous Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 revealed the nuclear weapons program of the Jewish Theocracy has been arrested in East Jerusalem. He is accused of talking to foreigners, what shows the fascism that really exists in Israel, where dissidents are not allowed to leave nor speak freely.

Mordechai Vanunu gave an interview to Basque journalists, published in Gara in February 2009, interview that I partly translated back to English in this blog.

Source: BBC.

Political terror rules Russia

Interesting interview today in Gara newspaper (in Spanish) to Svetlana Gannushkina, speaker of the human rights NGO Memorial, honored with a Sajarov price, on the terrible situation in Chechnya and Russia in general. Some excerpts:

Political murders are the norm, not the exception.

We are witnessing a Chechenization of all Russia.

Svetlana Gannushkina (Memorial)

On Chechnya:

[Razman Kadirov] and his men do whatever they want. There is no law. And fear has become part of the Chechnyan mentality. It is what happened in the times of Stalin, of Hitler, of Mussolini: people begin to love their oppressors and fear each other, just like in the old times.

In Chechnya we can't even speak of corruption as such. The term "corruption" means a collaboration between the political power and criminal organizations. In Chechnya there is no difference at all between the political and the criminal power: they are the same thing.

On the murder of Natalia Estemirova:

They went then to ask the neighbors and a woman said that at 9am they had brought Natalia into a car by force, while she cried she was being kidnapped. See how is fear that this woman, who knew Natalia and her work, did not dare to call anybody, not even Natalia's daughter, whom she also knew personally.

At the Kremlin:

Recently several representatives of human rights organizations were received by President Medvedev. We told him about the murders and he compared them to common crime. We don't say that the life one person is more valuable than other's, but political murders reveal the situation of society. The difference is huge because these reveal that power is allied with the criminals. And not just murders: the fact that they create false evidence like weapons or drugs in order to inculpate you, something that doesn't just happen in Chechnya but in all Russia, shows that something is very much rotten. It destroys all institutions and the legal system.

Multitudes support Egunkaria

Freezing temperatures did not stop Basques from pouring to the streets in support of the language and freedom of speech. An image is worth a thousand words:

Top representatives from nearly all sectors of Basque society were there:

• former Lehendakariak (presidents of the Basque autonomous region): Carlos Garaikoetxea and J.A. Ardanza
• Basque Nationalist Party, president of the Central Basque Committee: I. Urkullu,
• Nationalist Left: Jone Goirizelaia and Rufi Etxeberria
• Minor parties: Eusko Alkartasuna's secretary general Pello Urizar, United Left's coordinator Mikel Arana, Aralar's vice-coordinator Jon Abril
• Workers' unions: ELA's secretary general A. Muñoz, LAB's secretary general Ainhoa Etxaide (other unions, like the pro-Spanish Comisiones Obreras, the teachers' union EILAS, farmer's union EHNE and transport workers' union HIRU, etc. also supported the demo)
  
• Representatives of the Basque culture: Kontseilua's secretary general Xabier Mendiguren, Basque School's Confederation's president Koldo Tellitu, Basque Bertsolari Union's president Iñaki Murua, well-known writers Kirmen Uribe and Angel Lertxundi - among others

Basque language newspaper Egunkaria was clausurated in 2003 on made-up accusations of collaborating with ETA, in spite of the government having dropped the case out of shame, the trial began a few days ago after the the judge in charge admitted the private accusation of two fascist organizations, showing who does in fact rule Spain: Franco's ghost.

Source: Gara.