Mapuches take UN see in Chile

This happens after two days ago they briefly took other UN offices in Santiago (International Work Organization and Economic Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean). 

As the hunger strike of Mapuche prisoners goes beyond the 70 days and government and prisoners failed to reach an agreement last Friday, native organization Maulen Huanchu took yesterday the offices of the United Nations in Santiago de Chile with intent of remaining there indefinitely.

Source: Gara.

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.

Mapuche prisoners: 52 days in hunger strike

The hunger strike of Mapuche prisoners in Chile reaches today the 52nd day. In practical terms this means that they are beginning to notice the hard effects of the fast, losing muscle tissue and beginning to affect major organs as the liver, kidneys and heart. Their life is at risk.

The strikers demand the abolition of the anti-terrorist law by which they are being judged, under accusations of attacks and road blockades demanding that their ancestral lands be returned to the Mapuche communities.

The government is showing signs of weakness in this nonviolent struggle, and is asking, since tuesday, that the prisoners stop their hunger strike on promises of law reform. This announcement was welcomed by Mapuche organizations that demand hurrying up the procedure.

The strike began on July 12 in the prisons of Concepción and Temuco and has been joined by other prisoners gradually. The anti-terrorist law is a fascist law passed by Pinochet dictatorship and allows the imprisonment of suspects without charges for unlimited periods. If found guilty, the penalty is multiplied by three automatically.

The law is seldom applied to white Chileans but is systematically used against Mapuches, who are fighting for the return of their communal lands and their right to self-rule. The independent Mapuche polity was invaded by Chile in the 19th century and has no recognized autonomy.

The Appeal Court authorized prison guards to use forced feeding on striking prisoners.

Source: Gara.

This fight has, as so many other important news, got no room in mainstream media, either in Spanish or English. Many wonder if this happened in Cuba or Venezuela, what kind of media reaction would it trigger. This in turn causes deep concern for the situation of freedom of speech and journalism in general in the so called Western World. And this is not the only case: what do you know of the real situation Louisiana oil spill and its real effects on the people living at the Gulf of Mexico? If you are only following mainstream media: nothing at all! A very bad situation for information freedom the one we have.

The killing fields of Colombia

As one fascist president takes over his equally fascist predecessor in Colombia, one of the largest mass burials known to exist in the country is being unearthed at La Macarena, just 200 km south of Bogota. Some corpses are still fresh.

The Colombian paramilitary forces, promoted by the state in their fight not against the guerrilla but against the civilian dissidence (human rights' activists, leftist politicians, labor unionists...) and heavily involved in traffic of cocaine and its cheap derivative: crack, have murdered maybe 50,000 civilians, many of them social activists but many others mere random peasants used for training and then presented sometimes as guerrillas in the scandal of the false positives.

In many cases, the paramilitary forces used random peasants as victims for training their new recruits. The gangs' rookies had to disembowel and dismember these innocent people as means of initiation and training. They were also expected to do the same kind of hyper-violence when taking over a village, so peasants learned to fear them.

The new president, J.M. Santos, former minister of defense, is tainted with that blood and we can hardly expect any solution under his leadership, which represent only the continuity of mafias, death squads, generalized repression and the domination, under the shadowy protectorate of the USA, of the old oligarchic families, to which he belongs.

Source: La Haine.

See also this previous post.

How West Sahara was given to Morocco

There is a rather interesting historical review at Le Monde Diplomatique (in English) on how the then Spanish provinces of Saguía el Hamra and Río de Oro (then legally as much part of Spain as Madrid, by the way - so good for the unalienable unity of the fatherland) ended up in Moroccan hands with the blessings of the USA and France.

Map of the colonial West Sahara and Morocco in the mid 20th century (from Wikipedia).

Apparently the USA saw Algerian interest in supporting the Sahrawis as part of the Cold War geopolitics, so, by default, it supported Morocco discretely. Spain was reluctant to yield the territory and specially if it appeared they had been kicked out, however it eventually yielded to pressure in the context of an uncertain regime change.

The appointed Sahrawi council (Yemaa or D'jemaa) however declined to play the rubber-stamping role that the USA, France, Morocco and Mauritania had devised for them and instead declared its own dissolution and transfered its power to the recently created POLISARIO Front, which proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

To Moroccan disillusionment the African Union Organization, as well as most African states, also recognized the rebel republic and the weakest part, Mauritania, soon yielded to Polisario attacks and recognized the country's independence in 1979. Morocco became isolated in Africa. However, later on, the Moroccan tyranny (it's a police state where people fear speaking freely, I can tell you), with massive support from Saudi Arabia, the USA and France, managed to build their version of the Great Wall, forcing the Polisario out of most of the country and preventing them from attacking the much coveted phosphate mines and foreign fishing ships that had no authorization from the Republic.

All this only barely dealt with in the Le Monde Diplomatique article but it is still interesting to read to understand how the imperialist interests of the USA and France played in favor of the last absolute monarchy of Africa... and to read how Kissinger view the issue on his own words.

However, in spite of a two decades long cease fire, the wound is still open and the war might start again at any moment. Moroccan official maps, of the kind you find only there, have no borders south of Oujda, as the fascist monarchy claims all the desert for them: a good bunch of Algeria, all Mauritania and, who knows, maybe even Mali.

Further reading (in Spanish) at Sahara Libre, where you can find news of the ongoing conflict such as the violent repression of striking workers yesterday, the long hunger strike of Dr. Abbas Mohammed Chej Sebaj or how lobbyists in the USA are trying to bring the now unemployed Louisiana fishermen to the rich Sahrawi banks.

Oaxaca: police attacks civilians at San Juan Copala

The communities in resistance of the Triqui people or Oaxaca, Mexico, whose uphill struggle against the paramilitaries of UBISORT, supported by the state, was mentioned here before on two occasions, denounced yesterday that the state police has attacked the people of San Juan Copala, murdering two young sisters: Selena and Adela Ramírez López, 18 and 15 years old respectively. Two men are also reported missing: Alfredo Martínez and Hipólito Merino.

The attack happened at noon (12:15 local time) when groups of heavily armed UBISORT militias and state policemen entered the autonomous village of San Juan Copala, taking the town hall by force.

Earlier, on July 26th, UBISORT paramilitary groups shot for hours against the village, injuring María Rosa Francisco, 35, when she went for wood. She is still missing. They also killed dozens of domestic animals.

On July 29th, Anastacio Juárez, brother of the leader of UBISORT Rufino Juárez, was murdered. The murder bears, according to the locals, the signature of an guvernamental execution, as there are precedents in which high leaders of repression have been murdered so they cannot speak in court and this serves also to rally the paramilitary bandits and to criminalize the popular movement that has been so far strictly nonviolent.

By 14:20 yesterday, the state police left the town but the paramilitaries are still entrenched in the town hall.

Full communications at La Haine (in Spanish).

Israel bombs Gaza murdering 12

The Israeli armed forces attacked several places in Gaza strip tonight, including Gaza city, murdering 12. One of them is said to be a leader of Hamas, the Islamist party which won the latest Palestinian elections, namely Issa Batran, 42.

I presume that all or most other victims are civilians. At this moment no figure of injured or relations of buildings or infrastructure destroyed are known to me.

Any undiscriminated attack on civilian areas and refugee camps are immoral and illegal war crimes. Furthermore there has been no provocation whatsoever that Zionists could use this time to pretend any justification for this attack, which is the first of its kind since the terrible and genocidal bombing of 2009.

Even more worrisome is the lack of apparent mention in the usual mainstream media such as BBC or Al Jazeera. I could only find reference at The Guardian.

Sastre: past and present as Spaniard and as Basque

There is today a very interesting interview with acclaimed Spanish language dramatic author Alfonso Sastre at Gara newspaper. I am translating here, to the best of my capability, some of the most interesting passages.


Biographic notes:

Alfonso Sastre was born in 1926 at Madrid, beginning his career as dramatist in 1945, always with a rebellious intent that was heavily censored under fascism.

In 1974, in events that provide a sense of deja vú for today political repression, his wife, Eva Forest, and later himself as well were arrested for "collaboration with ETA". After his release on bail in 1975, and under death threats, he exiled himself to Bordeaux. Expelled by France in 1977, he is then refuged in Italy but returns to Spain upon his mother's death. After a second arrest for insults against the Army and the release of Eva, the family moves to Hondarribia in the Basque Country.

In 1998, upon the sudden judiciary closure of Egin newspaper, where he collaborated, he becomes director of its provisional replacement: Euskadi Información, a newspaper that published as stapled photocopies filled the void for moths until a new proper media was created from scratch and popular subscriptions: Gara.

In 2007, Eva Forest dies. In 2009 he became the leading figure of the list for the European Parliament Iniciativa Internacionalista, which suffered of widespread vote rigging, what probably prevented him from becoming MEP.

Some of his most celebrated plays are: 'Squad to death', 'The gag', 'Red earth', 'God's blood, Ana Kleiber', 'William Tell has sad eyes,' 'The fantastic tavern', 'The infinite journey of Sancho Panza', 'Too late for Philoctetes', 'Jenofa Juncal, the red gypsy woman of Jaizkibel mountain' and 'Where are you Ulalume, where are you?' His theater has been described as a mixture of Bertolt Brecht and the esperpento gender of Valle Inclán.

More information on Alfonso Sastre and Eva Forest at Sastre-Forest.com (in Basque and Spanish).


Interview fragments follow:

...

We are at a moment of laughing for not crying.

...

In the Basque Country there was a resistance to the Reform, that the Spanish left also proposed. A moment came when the ideas of a need of democratic break up vanished from the lands of Spain and found refuge in the Basque Country; it is here where the idea of going nowhere worth it if the new situation was not generated in terms of break up crystallized. These ideas crystallized here and are the origin of what later became the Basque Nationalist Left.

...

And Spanish and French intellectuals are at the height of the circumstances on the Basque case?

No, they are at the height of their ignorance of this situation. I believe that they are ignorants. I see that with the Spaniards I know: they are more or less at the same level, so to say, in everything but this issue. When the Basque issue is debated they ignore everything and, besides, it seems as if they reject trying to understand it.

Why that attitude?

Because of patriotism[1], of great power chauvinism... Lenin already mentioned chauvinistic patriotism; he made a criticism of what what was called great power chauvinism. And Spain and France are great powers in relation to the Basque Country. Chauvinism is a common philosophy that absolutely prevents them from seeing what is happening here. It is very difficuly. Friends living in Madrid, for example, say how difficult is to make understand some things that are understood living here. And it is because of the Spanish patriotism, which is totally blinding.

...

There are some people who have approached the problem and have understood it from Madrid; people like Antonio Álvarez-Solis[2], who understands the problem perfectly and is still a man who has moved all his life in territories distant from Basque matters. But he came by, looked and saw what was going on. Nothing but that. That, which looks so simple, must not be so because there are not many cases like him.

...

Eva[3] and I, specially Eva, created the Committee of Solidarity with the Basque Country and researched the tortures that were happening here, which were even more serious, more severe than the ones happening elsewhere in the State of Spain. Then we created some friendly links and these were part of the reasons why we came here.

And politically it is something I have said before: we saw that here the idea of break up [with fascism] was settled in a way in which it could not be prescinded and which was not betrayed. And all that complex of reasons made us came here, and also because in Madrid, for that great power chauvinism, we were in a rather not too "livable" situation, let's call it that way, at some times. If we would have remained there our destiny would have been to live in certain solitude or something like that, but we did not wish such a thing. And we did not doubt. We said: "our place from now on is the Basque Country", and we came to live here.

...

I have got setbacks because, even if the situation of a dramatist is not good anywhere in the Spanish territory, mine has been worse maybe for my betrayal of Spain, that is how my decision of choosing to live here has been evaluated. My career has gone downhill but would not have gone much better would I have not made this step; my works have been represented less than would have happened would I have stayed in Madrid. At the personal level however all have been satisfactions, because I would not enjoy the popular support, the sympathy I enjoy, the love from this People I love too... And that is a value that cannot be exchanged for anything.

...

And what do you think of a judiciary threat for a cause such as peace?

Peace is a subversive idea. It is a very subversive idea. That's it.

...

In the name of peace, for instance, or of justice, or freedom, in the Basque Country we witness arrests, illegalizations, repression... Do we live a perversion of language?

Effectively so, it is a perversion of language characteristic of power.

...

It is a weapon of mass destruction against intelligence; that is: intelligence is destroyed because it is dangerous for the system. And as they have all the might of the big media of expression and communication, they can do it: they can pervert language up to such extremes. And they do it. After all, it is a reflection of the intrinsic perversion of capitalism.

...

I have changed a lot in my theater, which has two very different phases. Since some moment I began making what I call complex tragedies. They are tragedies in which people laughs a lot sometimes. They are not really tragicomedies: tragicomedy is a balance that sometimes tends to one side and sometimes to the other, some sort of tragic line with comical episodes or a comic line with some tragic episodes. My complex tragedy is not a tragicomedy, it is true tragedy, just that, as life itself is that way, in these tragedies there are comical effects, and that makes theater becomes a representation of that complex reality; that is why I call them complex tragedies.

...

I am writing now some essays on [new socialism], a book titled: "Testing the future" in which I ask this kind of questions: how will socialism be? And some things are already very clear: we cannot talk anymore of a socialism of abundance; socialism cannot promise abundance anymore, that would be something negative. It is not socialism or abundance but neither socialism of poverty. Neither rich nor poor. It would be a society in which the concepts of rich and poor would be the ones excluded.

...

In the last years of fascism there was some sort of hyper-politicization of theater groups...

When Franco dies and reform begins instead of breaking up, previous compulsory censorship disappears and political parties become legal, including the communist party. Then the people of the hyper-politicized theater said: "our responsibility is over, there are now political parties, there is no censorship, so now let's do what we want". And the liberty they took was very minimal, almost ridiculous at times, because it was when total nudity appeared in the sceneries and language was populated by swear words. And that was freedom... so theater did not reach beyond. And some of the authors that had sponsored ideas of a true political theater were marginalized then; so, censors had not to forbid them anymore because it was the very companies which were not interested in their work. Censorship was not necessary anymore. That situation remains today.

Can that be a pattern of self-censorship to prevent uncomfortable situations?

Indeed. It is the same that happened under fascism. Possibilism as was called by Buero Vallejo[4] was a proposal of self-censorship. We all censored ourselves in some way. I wrote a piece on torture but, if I wanted it to be performed in Madrid (as I wanted), I could not place the action in Madrid. So I placed it in a more or less imaginary Algeria. But what I meant to denounce was torture in Spain. When this piece was translated to Russian, the translator asked me if I minded to place the action in Madrid. "I do not just mind" - I replied - "but that is what I would have done if possible". And in Moscow it was titled "Madrid does not sleep by night".

...

Officially there is no censorship. What do you think?

It does exist, it does exist... Censorship has been reproduced in different ways. The schedulers of theaters are today's censors. And is not that they have a purely ideological censorship but also a more trivial censorship as well. For instance, a piece of mine was not scheduled because they said it was sad: so they were censors against sadness.

...

Three years without Eva Forest... What did Eva mean in your life?

I am not yet in conditions of speaking of Eva calmly, but if it can be said in few words I will, and that Eva is... Thanks to her the Basque drift of our family happened. Would not it have been for her probably I'd be now in Madrid, in some apartment I don't know where, bittered about life. I do not know if I would have got to know well about this country because maybe I would be myself ignoring it, would I? I don't think so because I knew already enough to keep researching the matter. And, well, we are Basques because Eva wanted us to be so and she made it.

...

I am against what some years ago was called in Europe "weak thought". It was a criticism to Stalinist communists: better to have a weak thought than a dogmatic thought. I agreed that thought must not be dogmatic, because if it is dogmatic then it is not thought, but I disagreed with resigning to a mere weak thought. We will have to try at least that our thought has some strength; we will have to search for the reasons on which something we say is solid and not something circumstantial that is going to become false tomorrow but which will remain as truth tomorrow, the day after and long time in the future. The great thinkers have produced thoughts that are still valid today.

...

________________________

Notes:

[1] The use of the terms patriotism and nationalism seems to be one of those cases of "lost in translation" because while they are essentially synonyms in both Spanish and English, the emotional charge of each is quite different in either language. Patriotismo in Spanish has a fascist vibe and usage while nationalismo an anti-fascist and peripheral secessionist one. In English instead it is normally the term patriotism which has the favorable vibe and nationalism the opposite. I decided however to keep the literal translation of patriotismo into patriotism.

[2] Spanish-Catalan famous journalist and writer, founder of Interviú magazine and promoter of El Períodico (a Catalan diary). He took part in debates in the Basque TV until the new undemocratic government of López took over.

[3] Eva Forest, his late wife. Another famous author in Spanish language and a dedicated activist.

[4] Buero Vallejo Nájera, Spanish tragic novel author under fascism.

Old comrades call for the restitution of Socialism in China

The sad evolution of P.R. China into a capitalist authoritarian state wrapped in the red banner and the portraits of Mao is maybe producing some benefits in terms of absolute growth but largely at the expense of the workers and the communist project.

This is something evident to all since the massacre of Tian An Men and the repression against the Worker Movement it brought. However this is not lacking in contradictions and there is a clear growth of dissatisfaction and struggles within China. Often this alienation and explotation turns into suicides but worker strikes are also a growing trend.

Now five old high ranking comrades have published a manifesto demanding the restoration of workers' power in China.

The full article can be read at the China Study Group (among many other sites). In it the five old comrades demand:

1. Support for the workers on strike at Honda and other factories.
2. Force Foxconn and other abusive companies to respect human rights and worker diginity.
3. That official unions stand with the workers and not against them.
4. Government, specially local government, must protect workers.
5. Restoration of the working class as the leading force of the country, according to the constitution.

It is evident to me, as apparently to the authors of this manifesto, that the rapid economic growth of China along with the evolution towards Capitalism has brought severe contradictions to the East Asian power and that these contradictions are already exploding even if in a limited and repressed way. This means that, unless the state is able to recycle itself into a state that serves the people, as used to be the case, a revolution is at the gates.

This is just another symptom.

Pamplona: fascist aggression in San Fermin

The information on this matter was confusing at first, as the incident was believed to have been just one of several involving Spanish hooligans and Basque nationalists as some hollow heads got out to the streets with Spanish banners, what is generally considered a fascist provocation here and may cause serious fights.

But as time passes the case is becoming more clear: three armed Spanish fascists went into a popular meal of the San Fermin peñak on Sunday, dressed on Spanish flags and fascist tattoos and carrying also weapons such as a pepper spray, a machete and a pistol, pushing, threatening and insulting the people who were celebrating there.


Gaztelu Plaza was full with policemen but they did not intervene against the provokers.

A reason may well be that at least one of them, the one carrying the gun, was a policeman himself, as has been reported by Diario de Navarra.



However no word is said of the violence they caused.

Sources: Sare Antifaxista (1, 2), Boltxe, Diario de Navarra

Honduras: the spy who did not love us

This is the the person who, according to former Honduran minister Roland Valenzuela, organized the coup in Honduras:



Her name is Jacqueline "Jackie" Foglia Sandoval and was until recently Director of External Relations of Zamorano University in Honduras, a major recipient of USAID funds and orientation. Previously she was West Point cadet, where she obtained a degree in Political Sciences, and was later officer of the Honduran Armed Forces between 1984 and 1995. In 1987 she studied a Master in International Relations and International Economy in John Hopkins University, between 1991 and 1994 she was Defense Joint Aggregate at the Honduran embassy in Washington, in 2002 she was sent by the capitalists' syndicate Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP) to study at Carleton University in Canada where she obtained a degree in Diplomacy and Commercial Policy, she was also State Subsecretary for Turism while exerting privately in international trade consulting for a company or her own (Ifs Hondurans Consultants) and Alcon Group (a delegation of Cargill corporation). She assessed the negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement between the USA and the Central American countries, she exerted as President of the Commerce Chamber of Honduras, she was member of the Directors' Council of the COPEH, of the National Association of Industrials (ANDI) and of of the Mexican-Honduran Commerce Chamber. Finally she obtained the job at Zamorano University from where she coordinated last year's coup against the legitimate president Manuel Zelaya under command of the CIA.

She is the one who coordinated that each one who served as executors of the coup what they [the CIA, USAID, the US government] wanted them to do and declare, said Roland Valenzuela in a radio interview at San Pedro Sula.

Few days after accusing Foglia, Roland Valenzuela was murdered: in June 15 he was shot from behind by a criminal when leaving a restaurant.

Sources: Rebelión, GHYM and J. Foglia's curriculum vitae (all sources in Spanish language).

PS - I forgot to mention that Foglia also has an office in Atlanta (Georgia, USA) side by side with the quasi-official imperialist CNN broadcasting corporation.

This company just fired journalist Octavia Nasr for twitting that she lamented the death of Shia cleric Hussein Fadlalah, whose "feminist" views she admired. This event, which follows the firing of Hellen Thomas for a similar "crime of opinion", has apparently gone totally "unnoticed" (ahem, ahem) in the media but is another example of the extreme pressure that journalists face when working for the mainstream media, controlled by a few very powerful and very Zionist individuals.

Puerto Rico: de facto coup by NPP?

What Puerto Rican dramatist Roberto Ramos-Perea denounces[es] regarding the political situation in Puerto Rico sounds most worrisome.

He denounces that the pro-annexation New Progressive Party, which won the elections in 2008, lead by Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz and Chief of Staff Marcos Rodríguez Ema, is making an institutional coup that has caused strikes and violent confrontations. The theoretical leader of the party and the country, Governor Luis Fortuño is claimed to be without will, without opinion and without public presence nor responsibility.

Ramos-Perea informs that the conflict began with the firing of more than 20,000 public servants with the pretext of solving public deficit along with strangling the budget of art institutions. Meanwhile the government hired at great cost many companies and advisors akin to the NPP.

The NPP also placed four party members in the Supreme Court, which totals seven members. Then it suppressed student participation in the University government causing a student strike that lasted 60 days, followed by a legal modification of the number of members of the University government (Junta de Síndicos), that again granted the NPP total control.

The NPP has also privatized a large fraction of the natural area known as "Karso del Noroeste", that gathers 1/3 of all water in the country. The new country's budget and associated laws will promote privatization and hand public funds to the private sector without surveillance. When approving these laws, the microphones of opposition representatives and senators were turned off.

Two weeks ago the FBI arrested Senator Héctor Martínez, right hand of Rivera Schatz, on corruption charges. Martínez was taped in his last instance of graft and is said to have links with narcotraffic. Rivera Schatz defense of the "innocence" of his friend caused even greater political upheaval.

In June 30, date in which the text seems to be written, student and citizen groups claimed their right to assist to the deliberations in the Puerto Rican Congress, being beaten and tortured by the police. The National Guard was mobilized and sent to the Capitol, causing more clashes and repression.

So far the synthesis of what Ramos-Perea denounces as happening these last months in Puerto Rico. I am somewhat surprised of not having known anything about this earlier, a clear sign of media disinterest or censorship.

If any reader can point me to more extensive information, I'd appreciate it.

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 Supreme Court sees no crime but false confession under tortures, revoking Inquisition sentence

The Spanish Supreme Court has slapped again the New Inquisition tribunal (Audiencia Nacional) in the case of five Basque youths earlier declared guilty on the crime of support of terrorist organization and sentenced to five years of prison.

The five Basque citizens denounced tortures upon arrest and incommunication and signed self-inculpatory declarations at the police station where they "acknowledged" that they had distributed ETA's bulletin Zutabe.

Only on such "evidence", they were sentenced to five years of jail for support of terrorist organization.

Now the Supreme Court considers that there is total lack of evidence and that they should have been acquitted in first trial, accusing the Audiencia Nacional of sloppiness. It also says that the attitude of the state attorney in the case, trying to keep the original condemnatory sentence is "improper", as the state is supposed to defend human rights and the presumption of innocence.

Another issue highlighted by the high tribunal is that issuing the sentence after the original trial, took more than two years!

One of the victims of this case of tortures and false accusations, Mikel Zenigaonaindia, denounced recently (photo above) that he had been stalked by police, who threatened him with murder: "you are going to end like Txiki and Otaegi", who were the last two people executed by the Fascist regime in September 27 1975.

Of course no action was or will be taken against those policemen. That's how justice works in the Kingdom of Spain.

Source: Gara.

Barroso saber-rattles to impose social degradation in Europe

The right-wing President of the European Comission, Joao Barroso, reportedly warned of military dictatorships coming to life in Europe if the so-called "austerity measures" (i.e. taxing the poor to give to the rich) find resistence.

This is reported by Heinz Dieterich[es] and the EU Observer[en].

According to the latter, the Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), John Monks, had the following exchange with Barroso:

The chief of Europe's trade union chiefs, John Monks, has warned that the austerity packages being imposed across the bloc will send the continent "back to the 1930s." He reported that European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso also fears member states will turn their back on democracy - but for the opposite reason.

"This is extremely dangerous. This is 1931, we're heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with militarist dictatorship," the general secretary of the European Trades Union Congress (ETUC) said in an interview with EUobserver. "I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well."

Mr Monks reported that Mr Barroso has similar concerns, but based on diametrically opposed reasoning. He said the commission chief believes the austerity packages will save Europe from returning to the darkest days of the last century rather than precipitating the fall.

"I had a discussion with Barroso last Friday about what can be done for Greece, Spain, Portugal and the rest and his message was blunt: 'Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it'."

"He's very, very worried. He shocked us with an apocalyptic vision of democracies in Europe collapsing because of the state of indebtedness."

For Dieterich, however this exchange is more than mere concern: it is a direct threat:

The European bourgeoisie states, in other words, an ultimatum to the worker and popular movement: pay submissively the costs of the crisis caused by Big Capital or we make you pay by means of the military boot. In political language: if you offer resistance to reduction of your life quality levels, we will move from the veiled bourgeois dictatorship (representative democracy) to open bourgeois dictatorship.

The level of the interlocutors is a clear sign of the seriousness of the threat: Barroso is the highest executive officer of EU and Monks the highest ranking officer of mainstream European labor unions. Dieterich also reminds that it was European bourgeoisie which invented fascism and its variants and which had no problem in 1968 to bring in the tanks to quell the revolt in Paris.

He also cites a report by Merryl Lynch-Capgemini that shows that while the World is immersed in the worst economic crisis since 1930, the number of hyper-rich and their profits keeps growing, a clear sing of who is paying for the crisis: not the oligarchs who caused it but the plain people who has no fault whatsoever (other maybe than being too naive about the real intentions of their rulers and elite class).

Dieterich however calls for a reaction more in the line of the 1840s: when it was becoming evident that revolution was at the gates, the International elaborated a program of action, which had a major impact in 1848 and set the basis for the Worker Movement as we know it. That program is now known as The Communist Manifesto.

Dieterich says that we now know better how Socialism must be (democratic planning, work value and principle of equivalence) as well as how its political structure needs to be (participative democracy) but that we lack, unlike in 1847, unions and intellectuals with class consciousness and critical theory, reason why the European people is "defenseless" in front of this kind of blunt threats.


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Update (July 4): On second thought, I'd say that the Spanish Armed Forces are so extremely lacking prestige and numbers that they could hardly serve as backbone of any authoritarian regime. The chance of effective military coup in Spain is nil. However in the particular case of the multiethnic realm, a situation somewhat similar to that of Yugoslavia in the 90s may be generated, that is: open war instead of the current low intensity conflict.

I was somewhat intensely involved in documenting and reporting on the West Balcans war in the 90s and I recall a potentially relevant conversation however. It happened in Skopje, Macedonia, in an interview with the leader of the small liberal party. I don't recall neither the name of the man nor that of his party but doesn't really matter.

He related an anecdote of a year or so before the war broke up, a conversation he had with a CIA agent he said. The Macedonian was telling the spy that he was confident in the future because, after all, Yugoslavia was finally, after the fall of the Soviet Bloc, "strategically irrelevant".

To this the North American agent replied mysteriously: "I would not be so happy if my country would become strategically irrelevant". Soon after the war broke up.

The case of Spain is very different: it is strategically most relevant, in particular because it is a platform to control the Gibraltar strait and potentially North Africa and because it hosts key US bases in that strategic area: the naval base of Rota and the air base of Morón de la Frontera. Also for several reasons France specially would not want Spain to break apart (fear of contagion, important neighboring ally, major investments).

So, for good or bad, open inter-ethnic war in Spain is not probably an option, unless powerful third parties would intervene, what does not seem likely at all.

So I would dare say that the threats are empty threats in this case. Greece instead still keeps a large conscription army which can effectively occupy the country, unlike the Spanish one, which can barely just reinforce the police force. However one of the dangers of a conscription army is that recruits can potentially take over it, if they are organized.

The real problem is overall lack of organization of the class forces and a self-defeating pactist dynamic of the mainstream unions. Without grassroots class organization the people is very weak and even police alone, with the help of the media, controlled by the same oligarchic forces, can keep high levels of repression.

But a coup? I don't think so: they'd lose all their remaining legitimacy and would disintegrate easily.

Honduras went to the streets to protest the coup in the dark anniversary

I remembered three days ago the sad anniversary of the coup in Honduras. Today I come to know that in the Central American republic hundreds of thousands went (again) to the streets to protest against it.



It did not happen only in Tegucigalpa but across the country.

Carlos Reyes, speaker of the National Front of People's Resistance (FNRP) the coup has been tried to be made invisible, both inside and outside the country. Not just the coup but the crimes of the military and the resistance of the people.

Today we are certain that we have been doing the right thing, said Reyes. We have to install a Constituent National Assembly. This was the pretext on which the military-oligarchic alliance removed President Zelaya.

Source: La Haine[es] (includes photos and videos). More photos here.

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.

Honduras: dark anniversary

Today one year ago, the Honduran oligarchy and military took over the country deporting the elected and popular President Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya and establishing a more than dubious regime of terror.

Honduras 1 year later. In memory of Democracy
(by Allan McDonald)

Manola Romalo interviews President Zelaya at Rebelión (Spanish language, there's also a German version) with some interesting comments by the ousted leader that I translate here:

They have now more problems than before: they made not just the Honduran People but also the peoples of America aware of the threat that represents economical greed for democracies, with this aggression they managed to speed up the process of transformation, generating new opposition forces.

The influence of large multinationals reaches to the foreign policy of the USA, evidence is in the fact that, in the period of President Obama's administration, just as in the past, it fell in the terrible error of supporting state terrorism, with the return to military coups, well known practice of the far right, obstinate in sowing barbarism.

(...)

In three years we achieved growth indexes of 6.5 and 6.7, the best ones in Honduran history, and also the reduction of poverty in more than 10% for the first time in thirty years.

Inversely, since the coup to date, the country has entered economic recession, poverty has increased and also the number of poor, same as the meaningful reduction of private and state investment. The damage that the coup has caused to the process of economical development is going to take at least ten years to recover.

(...)

My return is linked to the return of the state of law to Honduras. Even [acting] President Lobo declares to feel threatened himself and right away he says he guarantees my safety.

Evidently they are using Honduras as lab rat, as an experimental laboratory of violence, returning the military castes to repress the People and induce wreckage to keep control on society.

(...) they refounded a regime of terror and persecution and the USA lost a great deal of its prestige in Latin America.

Gaza, Iraq without electricity

For some perverse reason these news are not first page... nor any page in most media.

Gaza's last working generator at the only power plant went down today. The other two were destroyed by the Zionist armed cowards in the "Cast Lead" genocidal massacre last year (also called Shoah, Hebrew for Holocaust, by Olmert).

Right now the only sources of electricity in Gaza are two power lines from Israel (120 MW) and Egypt (12 MW), the generator used to produce 60 W. It's estimated that the electricity supply will go down to 60%.

Ironically, the occupants, are not allowing medical equipment in because it has generators that might be used to purposes other than medical.

Meanwhile, in another land destroyed by the new crusaders, Iraq, people is beginning to risk their lives to protest in the streets (going out is always a life risk in Iraq since the USA invaded and that was seven years ago) demanding something we usually take for granted: normalization of electricity supply. Right now power is rationed to a mere two hours per day but the electricity bills are as fat as always.