Yet another international linguist takes a stand in favor of Gil in the Iruña-Veleia affaire

In this case it is Roslyn M. Frank, professor emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa and a scholar who has dedicated some good time to deal with Basque language, visiting this little corner of Europe very often since 1974 and authoring several books on Basque theme, mostly on linguistics.

Roslyn M. Frank (linguist)

In her latest visit, these days, Frank offered two interviews with Noticias de Alava (local newspaper in Spanish language):

In one of them she states her astonishment and that of the European scientific community because of the lack of analytics on the controversial pot shards with inscriptions (mostly in Basque and Vulgar Latin).

Two weeks ago I was at a congress in Germany in which there were a lot of scientists from everywhere in Europe, among them several archaeologists. When I told them about Iruña-Veleia, the first thing they asked was: 'Which were the results of analytics?' And I had to reply that they were never made. They could not understand. And asked once and again: 'But why were they not made?' And I did not know what to answer.

She compares the Kafkian circumstances surrounding Iruña-Veleia with a paternity demand in which the alleged father is the one demanding a paternity test after being declared guilty without any evidence.

It is impossible to talk of scientific consensus in this case. The data provided by the [official] report are very weak because of 359 pages most do not even have bibliographic references.

She is outraged by the procedure executed by the new director, Julio Núñez, which she considers an attack against the patrimony. A position held by this blog and SOS Iruña-Veleia, among others.

For linguists, she argues that the philological reconstruction of proto-Basque (the main argument held against the Lurmen archaeological team led by Eliseo Gil) cannot ever disprove any archaeological finding:

... the word 'proto' always means a reconstruction, which is hypothetical, because the appearance of new data often changes the nature of the reconstruction.

In other words, the academic inquisition of the Philology department of the Basque Country University has, consciously and mischievously, put the cart before the horses in this case.

In the other interview, she says that she hopes the best but expects little for Iruña-Veleia, at least while Núñez is in charge. Her denounce of his destructive methods contrasts with the support for the period in which the site was under the direction of Eliseo Gil and Idoia Filloy, when the site attracted as many as 35,000 visitors (2008).

In both interviews she lists a number of other important supporters of the original methods and findings, some of whom have already been mentioned here: Juan Mari Elexpuru (linguist), Hector Iglesias (linguist), Emilio Illarregi (archaeologist), Luis Silgo Gauche (archaeologist) and Edward Cecil Harris (archaeologist).

Found at Iruña-Veleia, Gezurra Ala Egia?[eu], where a paper by Roslyn Frank on the graphological analysis used to smear Eliseo Gil is also linked (click on 'descargar', PDF in Spanish). This document, which concludes with a request for the provincial government be stripped from its role as custodian of the original graffiti in benefit of the right of defense, is part of the procedures of the trial against Eliseo Gil. In this procedure it has also been ordered an official analytic by police as the provincial government has refused to do so.

For background and further information on this most sad scandal, see the category Iruña-Veleia in this blog.

I am Israel (video - documentary)

Not long, dynamic and very explanatory video on what is wrong with Israel (if you had still any doubt). It is available in several languages (version here in English).

The fact that it can explain so much in so little time really shows why Israel and its Lobby cannot win even the propaganda war: because truth defends itself and does it with relative ease, because it's too easy to identify the racist, colonialist and genocidal nature of this abhorrent polity.



Found at Justice, posted at YouTube by Jihano92, original site: I am Israel.

Yet another labor activist murdered in Colombia. Yet another mass grave found.

Germán Restrepo, 58, president of the packagers' union was murdered yesterday in the city of Medellín, where he lived and worked.

He is the last one of a long list of labor unionists murdered in Colombia in the last years: 547 since 2002, 32 in 2010 alone.

As denounced by the president of Unitary Workers' Central (CUT), Tarsicio Mora, many of those crimes remain without any investigation at all.

Medellín, the second largest Colombian city, remains one of the most dangerous places in the country, with death squads and criminal gangs acting impunely.

Source: Agencia de Prensa Rural[es]


Another mass grave found in the Colombian NE

The same site reports that yet another mass grave has been discovered in the department of César, near the Venezuelan border. 140 bodies were recovered,, mostly women, all them victims of the paramilitary terror that plagues the country with the consent and support of the state.

It is estimated that some 140,000 people have been victim of paramilitary terror only in this department. This figure does not include displaced persons.

Video: demolition of Bedouin homes... "to plant trees for Jews"

When the early eurocentric UN approved to divide Palestine in two and give more than half to a mere 30% of its residents, mostly recent arrivals from Europe, it took a most unjust and criminal decision overall but maybe it is particularly striking that nearly all the "empty quarter" of the Negev desert, which was 100% Arab, was also given to the new State of Israel.

Ethnic cleansing, genocide, wars, massacres followed... they are still our daily bread. Now the Jewish National Fund and the State of Israel are forcing Bedouins out of their traditional settlements into US-like "Indian reservations". They are technically "Israeli citizens" but that won't make a difference: they don't belong to the chosen race and hence they are an obstacle for the mad Nazi dream of Israel of a state only for Jews in the land of others.




Some historical maps of the Zionist land-grab, to help understanding of the perpetual Nakba:

Conquest and banstustanization:


Ethnic composition in 1946 (after the post WWII Jewish migrations but before partition):

Jews were then only majority in Jaffa (modern Tel Aviv urban area) and most had arrived that very year. Before WWII there were only 10% Jews in Palestine.

You can see that there were virtually no Jews south of Jerusalem but still the eurocentric UN of the time (still more than a decade until generalized decolonization) gave the projected Jewish state almost all of that region.

And now they evict the Bedouins with tax-deductible donations.

Where did all those terrorized and expelled Palestinians go?


To Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon, in this order. Gaza's population is made up essentially of refugees from what is now the State of Israel and their descendants. In Jordan and the West Bank registered refugees comprise 1/3 of all population, almost 1/8 in Lebanon. Others ended up in Kuwait, where they cheered Saddam Hussein's invasion (liberation?) which granted them citizenship, and yet others are scattered around the world.

Sources: Jews sans frontieres (video), Palestine Monitor (map), Public Opinion (map), Arab Though Forum (map). Some of the maps are originally from PASSIA, which has a great collection of historical maps of Palestine, which help understanding the essential crime of Israel and why this conflict has no solution while Israel is not forced to yield to the demands of the natives of Palestine.

Update: a report emphasizing the role of Israeli students, who volunteered as "police assistants", and their Nazi attitudes is available at Voltaire Net.

The evicted


and the evictors.

Feels to the Night of Broken Glass, really. But it's the daily bread at Nazi Israel.

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.

Politicians finally take a stand on the Iruña-Veleia scandal

Opposition party Aralar, by mouth of their leaders Patxi Zabaleta and Iñaki Aldekoa, has demanded the immediate suspension excavations and the firing of Julio Núñez from his charge of chief researcher of the Roman era site.

In press release they showed the video I posted here two days ago, demanding that the excavator was removed for good.

Hopefully this exposition of the ugly truth of the excavation will cause enough indignation, at popular, political and academic levels as to detain this crime against the archaeological patrimony.

Sources: Iruña-Veleia Gezurra ala Egia?[eu], Berria[eu], ABC[es]


Judges demand new analysis of the controversial inscriptions

On request of former director, Eliseo Gil, the tribunal in charge of the case for alleged fraud in the previous dig at Iruña-Veleia has ordered new analysis of the shards and other pieces that caused the controversy. The probe will be realized by the Guardia Civil (military police corps) after the Provincial Government has ignored all requests by the tribunal to produce analytic research themselves.

Sources: Iruña-Veleia Gezurra ala Egia?[eu], El Correo[es]


Each day the case against the former archaeologists seems weaker and motivated by pure pathetic camarilla reasons. Giving the charge to the only archaeologist who participated in the persecution, Julio Núñez, with the atrocious results of brutal destruction, maybe in order to destroy possible further evidence in favor of Lurmen, only shows how negatively such camarilla conspirations can evolve when they feel protected by institutionalized impunity and without any real investigative media around to air the dirty clothes.

If we had a half-decent democracy and a half-decent media context this scandal and manipulation could surely never have gone so far.

For background information on Iruña-Veleia, see previous tematic posts at Leherensuge, SOS Iruña-Veleia and Lurmen's dedicated site.

Sad re-inauguration of Iruña-Veleia archaeological site. Video of the destructive dig

Yesterday the Vasco-Roman site of Iruña-Veleia was officially re-inaugurated after several years of closure. For Julio Núñez and his demolition team it was just another day of mechanical excavation and dumping of layers and layers of archaeological treasures.

This has no name!



In the video above (narration in Spanish) it is shown how the excavator is almost the only one working at the site. Nobody gathers any remnant nor keeps any record of the layers nor anything: it's all dumped in the truck once and again without any control.

It is intentional and criminal destruction of the patrimony.

Just before the authorities and official press arrive for the discourses and photos, the excavator and truck are hidden. The members of SOS Iruña-Veleia attempt (says the narrator) to give a letter of protest to the Provincial President but police prevents them from doing so.

As the politicians leave the demolition continues.

Found via Iruña-Veleia Gezurra ala Egia?

Archaeologist Idoia Filloy against the destruction of Iruña-Veleia

J. M. Elexpuru published yesterday night an article of Idoia Filloy, co-director of the previous archaeological team, Lurmen, where she denounces the atrocity that is being perpetrated against which is possibly the most important Vasco-Roman site.

The article is in Spanish and it is too long for me to translate integrally but I will provide here some of the most important passages:

Parcel 98 [see map] is where work has begun, planned to affect 17,000 m². In this area, thanks to air photography carried by us, it is known the existence of a dense network of structures, clearly visible from air, thanks to the shadows that differential vegetation growth projects, which trace a whole urban network under the soil. Also, in 2006, our team -under the direction of Eliseo Gil and myself- carried 13 stratigraphic probes that showed the existence in this parcel of a most rich archaeological patrimony of Roman and pre-Roman age. We could assess how, under a layer of agricultural disturbance of some 30 cm. on average, intact Roman archaeological remains appeared, with strata and structures to which abundant materials were associated. (...)

However Núñez' Director Plan contemplates the mechanical elimination with heavy machinery of 50 cm. of earth potency in 14,000 m² of the site, estimating a removal of some 7000 m³ of soil. The Plan itself admits the risks of such an actuation, because of the possibility of affection to layers of archaeological interest (...)

But the worst has happened when field work has begun, that is when the mechanical elimination of soil was started. And that is because not only the planned 50 cm. have been removed but in many cases more than 1 m. has been excavated with heavy machinery. (...) We can see clearly in the photographs how the mechanical excavation has not just affected structures but that has eliminated vast archaeological layers, what has caused the irreparable loss of most important archaeological information, fundamental for the reconstruction of the historical sequence of the site, as well as of associated materials. There is even a zone where a Roman pavement at a depth of more than 1 m. has been exposed, and I ask: where are occupation archaeological layers, the collapse remains or whatever it had on top? (...)

The feeling one gets is that the goal is to reach the archaeological structures (at whatever depth they were) as if the objective was to offer in the shortest possible term a wide zone with visible constructions. (...)

I must remind that this zone is one of the areas where the so-called exceptional graffiti were found, both on the surface as in three of the stratigraphic probes, what means that the mechanical excavation of the area would cause the destruction of evidence for a possible future judicial investigation.

One of the many controversial exceptional graffiti, in this shard, found in parcel 98, we can read NEU ('I' or 'me' in Basque)

Therefore it is my opinion as experienced archaeologist (...) that a flagrant destruction of the patrimony of Iruña-Veleia is being carried. And in a few days more the level of affection would be even greater if nobody intervenes. I believe that excavating as is being done here means destroying severely and permanently the underlying patrimony.

Hence this text is an express denounce of what, in my opinion, is a grave attack against our Patrimony and I request to the responsible public institutions to act accordingly and not to tolerate something like this.

Additionally, to the judicial denounce presented by SOS Iruña-Veleia association we have added now our own.

Further reading:

• Articles on Iruña-Veleia at Leherensuge
• SOS Iruña-Veleia (mostly in Spanish but with many informative photos)
• Veleia.com (Lurmen's site on Iruña-Veleia)
  

Send emails of protest to: dfa@alava.net (Provincial Government) and patrimoniohaa@alava.net (Provincial Direction of Historical-Artistic and Archaeological Patrimony).

Update (Jul 20): I have been suggested to send protests also to the Basque Government - Direction of Patrimony. No direct email available but there is a suggestion box of the Department of Culture HERE.

And more "archaelogical" vandalism at Veleia

SOS Iruña-Veleia is doing a prime job documenting the atrocity that "archaeologist" and "educator" Julio Núñez is doing at Iruña-Veleia, with new photos each workday. These here belong to July 16 and are part of a larger group of images.



As you can see in these photos of Prof. Núñez at work (notice how he has achieved his likely goal of digging in perfectly clean white clothes!) the layer removed must be of at least 1 meter, twice the size he authorized himself to do and three to five times the agricultural layer on top.


The average height of Basque males is like 175 cm., hence the mechanical excavation must have get rid of 125 to 150 cm according to the image above, unless that guy is a Pygmy.

Archaelogy is, we know, a destructive procedure, hence the importance of keeping the best possible record and being very methodical, even of leaving sectors untouched for future excavations to implement presumably more advanced techniques. In this case, huge amounts of potentially (and most likely) informative material have just been dumped.

I can only understand this as cultural genocide: destroying the archaeological legacy of Basques and all Europeans.

The terrible effects of radioactivity in Fallujah, Iraq

There have been repeated informations coming from Iraq on the population of Fallujah being damaged by unknown malignant agents (possibly depleted uranium or other radioactive or biochemical agents) since the brutal and ill-reported battle of Fallujah in the year 2004 between invading forces from the USA and local Iraqi resistance militia.

Now, finally, an academic report has been made and published, confirming the atrocious situation.

Chris Busby et al., Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2010.

Abstract: There have been anecdotal reports of increases in birth defects and cancer in Fallujah, Iraq blamed on the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium) in heavy fighting which occurred in that town between US led forces and local elements in 2004. In Jan/Feb 2010 the authors organised a team of researchers who visited 711 houses in Fallujah, Iraq and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality. The total population in the resulting sample was 4,843 persons with and overall response rate was better than 60%. Relative Risks for cancer were age-standardised and compared to rates in the Middle East Cancer Registry (MECC, Garbiah Egypt) for 1999 and rates in Jordan 1996–2001. Between Jan 2005 and the survey end date there were 62 cases of cancer malignancy reported (RR = 4.22; CI: 2.8, 6.6; p < rr =" 12.6;" rr =" 38.5;" rr =" 9.24;CI:" rr =" 9.7;CI:" rr =" 7.4;CI:">80 deaths per 1,000 births. This may be compared with a rate of 19.8 in Egypt (RR = 4.2 p <>The mean birth sex-ratio in the recent 5-year cohort was anomalous. Normally the sex ratio in human populations is a constant with 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls. This is disturbed if there is a genetic damage stress. The ratio of boys to 1,000 girls in the 0–4, 5–9, 10–14 and 15–19 age cohorts in the Fallujah sample were 860, 1,182, 1,108 and 1,010 respectively suggesting genetic damage to the 0–4 group (p <>

...

Conclusions

This study was intended to investigate the accuracy of the various reports which have been emerging from Fallujah regarding perceived increases in birth defects, infant deaths and cancer in the population and to examine samples from the area for the presence of mutagenic substances that may explain any results. We conclude that the results confirm the reported increases in cancer and infant mortality which are alarmingly high. The remarkable reduction in the sex ratio in the cohort born one year after the fighting in 2004 identifies that year as the time of the environmental contamination. In our opinion, the magnitude of these effects make it difficult to question them on the basis of any of the hypothetical shortcomings of the study type which we have considered although these must be borne in mind. However, owing to the various constraints placed by circumstance on the methods employed, we must emphasise that the results of this study should be interpreted with those aspects in mind. Finally, the results reported here do not throw any light upon the identity of the agent(s) causing the increased levels of illness and although we have drawn attention to the use of depleted uranium as one potential relevant exposure, there may be other possibilities and we see the current study as investigating the anecdotal evidence of increases in cancer and infant mortality in Fallujah.


There is an interesting article at David Rothscum Reports blog extending in the implications of these findings and some details that are not apparent on first sight, such as the infant mortality being still growing and not decreasing at all. If you feel you can read some of the first hand testimonies and watch some of the photos of the murdered children without fainting, you can see some in this other article at the same blog.

In turn Layla Anwar reported on this matter some days ago and denounced some details that are not apparent at all in the paper:

- the Iraqi authorities threatened all the participants of this survey with arrest and detention should they cooperate with the "terrorists" who were interviewing them. In other words, they were threatened under the anti-terrorism act.

- The U.S forces prohibited Dr.Busby for gathering any data, arguing that Falluja is an insurgency zone.

- The doctors from Falluja turned down the request to be aired live on the Ahmad Mansour program because they had received several death threats and feared for their lives.

It is important, I believe, to remind that Gaza Strip was subject to the same kind of criminal attack with depleted uranium and other niceties by Israel in the 2008-09 Christmas, with the complicit silence of the then President-elect Barack Obama (who has later also supported Israel in other criminal actions such as the terrorist attack against the Mavi Marmara). Some scattered information of similar radiation-caused damages is known but because of the savage siege that Israel imposes on the open-air prison it is impossible to know with any detail what is exactly happening.

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.

Even the Red Cross calls for the end of the Gaza blockade

It surprised me very much because the policy of the Red Cross is not to make public declarations in order to preserve their neutrality and keep the cooperation with all governments and other combatant forces.

It just underlines how dire and in violation of all humanitarian and even war law is the situation in Gaza, often compared with the Nazi concentration camps and the Warsaw ghetto.

The whole of Gaza's civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law, declared the ICRC.

Source: BBC.

Biden defends Israel

Never mind Israel spits on him, insults him, disrespects him... US Vicepresident Joe Biden has rushed to defend Israel right to do what it wants in regards to Gaza.

The boot-licking attitude of US politicians towards the Zionist Project is unbelievable. I'd be deeply ashamed would I have US nationality. In fact I am deeply ashamed anyhow as human being because what affects other people affects me too and because, whatever you may believe, I have sympathy for and feel solidarious with the US people (meaning working class, of course)

The exact words were:

Israel has the absolute right to protect its security interests.

Absolute?! What the heck! What is going on here? Why Israel, a terrorist rogue racist genocidal state has absolute rights and instead the right of all others, beginning by Palestinians is relative or non-existent?

This has no name and shows how the Zionist Mafia totally controls the power resorts in the USA.

Shame... absolute shame.

But for now on, if anyone had still any doubt, we know that whatever Israel has, whenever it murders pacifists and civilians, it is doing so because the USA shamelessly and absolutely backs it.

Zionist Final Solution one step further

A new military order, what means "law" for the West Bank and East Jerusalem, will allow the Israely Army to deport any person, particularly Palestinians, who do not carry "proper identification". Alternatively they could be jailed for seven years.

Read more at Al Jazeera.

This is an obvious attempt to push the genocide one step beyond expelling (to the Gaza Ghetto, I presume) all Palestinians they can in order to annex the West Bank.

All this withe the boot-licking complacency of Western powers, who, in spite of all insults by Israel, choose to submit to the Zionist diktats against all decency, dignity and common sense.

Update: full details of the new Nazi Israeli order at Sabbah Report.

The genocide in Colombia

Azalea Robles denounces at Rebelión the existence of a mass burial, with at least 2000 corpses at the municipality of La Macarena, Meta department, Colombia. She also shows outage that its existence, repeatedly denounced by human rights groups from Spain and Britain, as well as by the neighbours, alerted by missing people and leakings to drinking water, has been ignored by the media both in Colombia as elsewhere.

She reports worry for the danger that the Army, that is clerly behind it, is trying to dismantle it before it's researched.

The Asturian Committee for Human Rights also report of another mass burial at Argelia, Valle del Cauca, which they describe as a slaughterhouse for human beings. Some 4200 mass burials are known to exist in Colombia.

Azalea Robles has also reported previously of c. 50,000 murdered (of which more than 2500 labor unionists) by the army and death squads, many of them made to totally vanish by throwing them to the caymans or burning them in ovens, like the Nazis.

She reports vividly, from the words of a death squad member, how truckloads of innocent civilians were used en masse for the most macabre practices of how to dismember people alive back in 1994.

Besides the 50,000 murdered, some four million have been forcibly displaced and their lands (c. 6 million hectares) robbed to sell them to the multinational corporations, landowners and the very military officers in charge of these crimes.

The following companies are considered to be accomplices of the Colombian state terrorism: Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Chiquita Brands, Drummond, Cemex, Holcim, Muriel Mining Corporation, Glencore-Xtrata, Anglo-American, BHP, Billington, Anglo Gold Ashanti, Kedaha, Smurfit Kappa - Cartón de Colombia, Pizano S.A., Maderas de Darién, Urapalma S.A., Monsanto, Dyncorp, Multifruit S.A. (branch of Del Monte multinational), Occidental Petroleum Corporation, British Petroleum, Repsol YPF, Unión Fenosa, Endesa, Aguas de Barcelona, Telefónica, Canal Isabel II, Suez, Ecopetrol, Petrominerales, Gran Tierra Energy, Brisa S.A., Empresas Públicas de Medellín, B2 Gold - Cobre y Oro de Colombia S.A.

Gaza's only power plant stops working due to blockade

In the middle of winter, shortly a year after Israel began its genocidal campaign against the Gaza ghetto, the only power plant of the tiny district has stopped running because of lack of combustible. 70% of the electricity of Gaza Strip depends on this plant, what means that since today, most Gazans, who are 80% refugees from Israel, won't have electricity for heating or anything.

Would I believe in the propaganda of the usual media, I'd expect the marines to invade and fix the problem... but guess not. One would have to be really naive to believe in such humanitarian fallacies.

Our governments are accomplices of this genocide, most of the media are accomplice of this genocide, Arab governments are also accomplices of this genocide. I feel powerless and deeply ashamed.

Source: Gara.

The Ceylon death camps

280,000 Tamils (men, women, children...) are still imprisoned in the so-called "refugee camps" of Sri Lanka. The situation has been these days denounced as awful, death threatening and secretive. Humanitarian organizations working in the camps are forbidden to speak of what happens there but the facts are anyhow getting to be known in those so-called "refugee camps" that are in fact mass open air prisons.

It is not just that the people can't freely return to their homes after many months that the war is over, or that the nutritional needs of children are not been met at all, but the fact that most of such camps are plainly flooded and children and adults alike are forced to live in water and side by side to their own excrements. People are dying right now on contagious diseases that they would probably never catch outside.

While the Sinhalese government has promised to liberate the refugees after "screening", in all these months only a handful of elderly or incapacitated have been in fact liberated, while instead some 10,000 have been sent to secret prisons. And it would seem that unless a clamor rises against this fascist and racist treatment of the people, the Sinhalese government won't do anything but just let those many thousand Tamils die.

I'd suggest not buying tea from Ceylon to begin with, as that is their main export.

On a side note, the UN has declined to provide the total figure of deaths in the war in order "to avoid a diplomatic conflict", what is unprecedented, but it is known that some 20,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed by government forces in the last month of the war, 10,000 of them in a single day: May 17th.

Source: Gara.
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Bilderberg Meeting 2009

I have already mentioned the secretive meeting of the Western elite at Athens this year. Now Andrew G. Marshall reviews what seem to have been the contents of this meeting, centered in the economy (available at Global Research Center and at Voltaire Network).

It seems that the core issues of this secretive aristocratic meeting have included as central issue the current gloomy economic situation, and whether this will be a sharp and short depression or a long looming structural crisis, as most forecast. It seems that the Bilderberg billionaires and proconsuls want to make this a sharp crisis leading to an increased global government, by pushing ahead the more centralized but terribly undemocratic version of the EU, reinforcing the WHO and the IMF and expanding the NAFTA (ALCA) elsewhere into Latin America.

Nevertheless there seem to be opposed fractions within the hyper-rich and hyper-powerful. Some actually fear that the crisis will cause the collapse of their own power and the unsustainability of the system overall and want by any means a rapid recovery. While others seem to prefer to use the economic downturn into their benefit and push ahead even more radical imperial plans within this context.

One of the most troubling rumors is maybe that a plan has been proposed to dramatically reduce global population to some 2 billion people, in what would be the largest ever genocide of history. The worst thing about this is that they actually seem to have reached a consensus in this matter, though the details are unclear.

Another apparent consensus have been reached into destroying the US dollar's hegemony and creating a global currency instead, based on the expansion of IMF's special drawing rights (SDRs).

As I mentioned before, it is surprising that with the huge US military representation at the conspirational meeting, no informations have been leaked at all regarding the Iraq-Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan issues. This is odd to say the least and makes me suspect that the informations that are being leaked, even if accurate, are only part of the whole issue. The fact that next year's meeting will be held in Israel, suggests that Zionist global and regional projects, including this sensitive Euphrates-Indus region are high in the Bilderberg agenda in spite of not being unofficially even mentioned.

Also there is an interview with investigative journalist Daniel Estultin on the Athens meeting:



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Peru massacres natives in oil-related protests

20-22 citizens and 9-12 policemen are said to have died in violent incidents at the Amazonian town of Bagua, near Ecuador. Other 30-36 civilians were also injured. Figures vary depending on sources.

The locals had been protesting against the new Peruvian laws that would allow for easier exploitation of Amazonian oil, lumber and mining resources by multinational corporations with no respect for the ecology of the rainforest or the health and rights of the natives.

Eventually the Peruvian government sent armed helicopters that opened live fire on the protesters killing many. This act has been denounced as the largest genocidal action in the alst 20 years.

The new ultracapitalist laws that the Peruvian parliament is set to approve have been massively rejected by the natives, who make up a sizeable fraction of all Peruvians, and the subsequent revolts have brought the government to declare the state of emergency in 5 regions.

Sources: Rebelión , BBC, Al Jazeera.
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Tamil Tigers lay down arms "to stop the slaughter".

The struggle has reached its bitter end. Against all odds we have contained the Sinhalese army without any help, except the endless support of our people. It is our people who is dying under the bombs and missiles, of starvation and illnesses. We have only one option left to remove the last weak pretext of our enemy to exterminate our people. We have decided to silence our weapons. We only lament the loss of lives, that we cannot sustain for longer. We won't bear anymore watching how the blood of our people is spilled.

We need to do everything on our hands to stop this slaughter. If this implies laying down our arms and get into a peace process, that is something we already said were willing to do. We are living in an unprecedented historical moment that requires unprecedented prudent historical decisions. If that saves the lives of thousands, it must be done.

This is the excerpt published by Gara of the communication of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, signed by Selvarasa Pathmanathan.

An interview with this leader of the Tamil guerrilla can be watched at Channel 4 as well. He denies surrender but insists in using the expression "laying down arms" instead. He also rejects they have used civilians as human shields claiming instead that the people went with them because they distrust the Sinhalese army.
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