05 October 2012
Historia de España for dummies
La historia reciente de España que no te contaron en la escuela ni en las miniseries de la tele.
21 September 2012
17 September 2012
The Wahhabist Inquisition
The Inquisition is alive and well today in Spain sorry, Saudi Arabia and targets women:
"“Women living under Saudi rule must wear the abaya, or total body cloak, and niqab, the face veil; they have limited opportunities for schooling and careers; they are prohibited from driving vehicles; are banned from social contact with men not relatives, and all personal activity must be supervised including opening bank accounts, by a male family member or "guardian." These Wahhabi rules are enforced by a mutawiyin, or morals militia, also known as "the religious police," officially designated the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) who patrol Saudi cities, armed with leather-covered sticks which they freely used against those they considered wayward. They raid homes looking for alcohol and drugs, and harassed non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as believers in other faiths.” "
It’s widely reported that the obscenely opulent and morally-perhaps-not-entirely-of- the-highest-standards Saudi Royal Family made a Faustian deal with Wahhabite leaders. The deal supposedly, was that the Wahhabists are free to export their fanatical brand of Islam around to the Islamic populations of the world in return for agreeing to leave the Saudi Royals alone. There are, however, other dark and dirty spoons stirring the Wahhabite-Salafist Saudi stew.
Little known is the fact that the present form of aggressive Saudi Wahhabism, in reality a kind of fusion between imported jihadi Salafists from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabites. Leading Salafist members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into the Saudi Kingdom in the 1950’s by the CIA in a complex series of events, when Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood following an assassination attempt. By the 1960’s an influx of Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia fleeing Nasserite repression, had filled many of the leading teaching posts in Saudi religious schools. One student there was a young well-to-do Saudi, Osama bin Laden
During the Third Reich, Hitler Germany had supported the Muslim Brotherhood as a weapon against the British in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Marc Erikson describes the Nazi roots of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood thus:
…as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and ’40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide" Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.
After the defeat of Germany, British Intelligence moved in to take over control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, for financial and other reasons, the British decided to hand their assets within the Muslim Brotherhood over to their CIA colleagues in the 1950s.
According to former US Justice Department Nazi researcher John Loftus, “during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now, when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Dr Abdullah Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism."
"Everyone thinks that Islam is this fanatical religion, but it is not,” Loftus continues. “They think that Islam—the Saudi version of Islam—is typical, but it’s not. The Wahhabi cult has been condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the Taliban and in Saudi Arabia—that’s how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence."
Further reading:
Marc Erikson, "Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 2)," AsiaTimes.Online, November 8, 2002.
Ibid.
John Loftus, "The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda," Jewish Community News, October 11, 2006.
"“Women living under Saudi rule must wear the abaya, or total body cloak, and niqab, the face veil; they have limited opportunities for schooling and careers; they are prohibited from driving vehicles; are banned from social contact with men not relatives, and all personal activity must be supervised including opening bank accounts, by a male family member or "guardian." These Wahhabi rules are enforced by a mutawiyin, or morals militia, also known as "the religious police," officially designated the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) who patrol Saudi cities, armed with leather-covered sticks which they freely used against those they considered wayward. They raid homes looking for alcohol and drugs, and harassed non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as believers in other faiths.” "
It’s widely reported that the obscenely opulent and morally-perhaps-not-entirely-of- the-highest-standards Saudi Royal Family made a Faustian deal with Wahhabite leaders. The deal supposedly, was that the Wahhabists are free to export their fanatical brand of Islam around to the Islamic populations of the world in return for agreeing to leave the Saudi Royals alone. There are, however, other dark and dirty spoons stirring the Wahhabite-Salafist Saudi stew.
Little known is the fact that the present form of aggressive Saudi Wahhabism, in reality a kind of fusion between imported jihadi Salafists from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabites. Leading Salafist members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into the Saudi Kingdom in the 1950’s by the CIA in a complex series of events, when Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood following an assassination attempt. By the 1960’s an influx of Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia fleeing Nasserite repression, had filled many of the leading teaching posts in Saudi religious schools. One student there was a young well-to-do Saudi, Osama bin Laden
During the Third Reich, Hitler Germany had supported the Muslim Brotherhood as a weapon against the British in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Marc Erikson describes the Nazi roots of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood thus:
…as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and ’40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide" Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.
After the defeat of Germany, British Intelligence moved in to take over control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, for financial and other reasons, the British decided to hand their assets within the Muslim Brotherhood over to their CIA colleagues in the 1950s.
According to former US Justice Department Nazi researcher John Loftus, “during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now, when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Dr Abdullah Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism."
"Everyone thinks that Islam is this fanatical religion, but it is not,” Loftus continues. “They think that Islam—the Saudi version of Islam—is typical, but it’s not. The Wahhabi cult has been condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the Taliban and in Saudi Arabia—that’s how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence."
Further reading:
Marc Erikson, "Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 2)," AsiaTimes.Online, November 8, 2002.
Ibid.
John Loftus, "The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda," Jewish Community News, October 11, 2006.
07 June 2012
¿En Cuba no hay elecciones?
Cuba, 0% de desnutrición: Cuba: La menor tasa de mortalidad infantil del mundo. Cuba: De los mejores sistemas sanitarios del mundo según la OMS: EEUU: Millones de niños latinos de EE. UU. pasan hambre por la crisis . Estas cosas tampoco serán titular nunca en TV, y esto si es la verdadera democracia. Viva Cuba
26 May 2012
The Power Principle
A gripping, deeply informative account of the plunder, hypocrisy, and mass violence of plutocracy and empire; insightful, historically grounded and highly relevant to the events of today.
This documentary is about the foreign policy of the United States. It demonstrates the importance of the political economy, the Mafia principle, propaganda, ideology, violence and force.
It documents and explains how the policy is based on the interest of major corporations and a tiny elite to increase profits and the United States governments own interests in maintaining and expanding it’s imperialistic influence.
Inside the United States this has been made possible with a propaganda of fear for the horrible enemies like the Soviet Union, Communists and so on and a love for “free markets”, “democracy”, “freedom” and so on.
Externally (and increasingly internally) this has caused massive poverty and suffering, genocide, war, coups, crushed unions and popular movements and environmental destruction.
The Power Principle | The Empire | Part I from Information Machine on Vimeo.
28 April 2012
Catastroika
The creators of Debtocracy, a documentary with two million views broadcasted from Japan to Latin America, analyze the shifting of state assets to private hands.
They travel round the world gathering data on privatization in developed countries and search for clues on the day after Greece’s massive privatization program.
12 April 2012
25 March 2012
PARA TODOS MIS AMIGOS/AS FUNCIONARIOS
Artículo redactado por un funcionario del Grupo A. Difícilmente se puede expresar mejor la situación actual. Un saludo.
SI eres funcionario pásalo a toda España. Si no lo eres y no estas de acuerdo, ¡váyase usted a la mierda!
Resulta que en la década prodigiosa del pelotazo, cuando media España se lo llevaba caliente a casa, cuando un encofrador sin estudios se embolsaba tres mil euros, cuando hasta el último garrulo montaba una constructora y en connivencia con un par de concejales se forraba sin cuento, cuando un gañán que no sabía levantar tres ladrillos a derechas se paseaba en Audi, los funcionarios aguantaban y penaban. Nadie se acordaba de ellos. Eran los parias, los que hacían números para cuadrar su hipoteca, hacer la compra en el Carrefour y llegar a fin de mes, porque un nutrido grupo de compatriotas se estaba haciendo de oro inflando el globo de la economía hasta llegar a lo que ahora hemos llegado.
Y ahora que el asunto explota y se viene abajo, la culpa del desmadre… es de los funcionarios. Los alcaldes, diputados y senadores que gobiernan la cosa pública a cambio de una buena morterada no son responsable de nada y nos apuntan directamente a nosotros: somos demasiados, hay que ultracongelarnos, somos poco productivos. Los responsables bancarios que prestaron dinero a quienes sabían que no podrían devolverlo tampoco se dan por aludidos. Todos los intermediarios inmobiliarios, especuladores, amigos de alcalde y compañeros de partida de casino de diputado provincial no tenían noticia del asunto. Nosotros sí. Como diría José Mota: ¿Ellos? No. ¿Nosotros? Si. Siendo así que ellos? No. Por tanto, nosotros? Si.
La culpa, según estos preclaros adalides de la estupidez, es del juez, abogado del estado, inspector de hacienda, administrador civil del estado que, en lugar de dedicarse a la especulación inmobiliaria a toca teja, ha estado cinco o seis años recluido en su habitación, pálido como un vampiro, con menos vida social que una rata de laboratorio y tanto sexo como un chotacabras, para preparar unas oposiciones monstruosas y de resultado siempre incierto, precedidas, como no podía ser de otra forma, de otros cinco arduos años de carrera. Del profesor que ha sorteado destinos en pueblos que no aparecen en el mapa para meter en vereda a benjamines que hacen lo que les sale de los genitales porque sus progenitores han abdicado de sus responsabilidades. Del auxiliar administrativo del Estado natural de Écija y destinado en Barcelona que con un sueldo de 1000 euros paga un alquiler mensual de 700 y soporta estoicamente que un taxista que gana 3000 le diga joder, que suerte, funcionario.
La culpa es nuestra. A poco que nos descuidemos nosotros los funcionarios seremos el chivo expiatorio de toda una caterva de inútiles, vividores, mangantes, políticos semianalfabetos, altos cargos de nombramiento digital, truhanes, pícaros, periodistas ganapanes y economistas de a verlas venir que sabían perfectamente que el asunto tarde o temprano tenía que petar, pero que aprovecharon a fondo el momento al grito de mientras dure dura! y que ahora, con esa autoridad que da tener un rostro a prueba de bomba, se pasan al otro lado del río y no sólo tienen recetas para arreglar lo que ellos mismo ayudaron a estropear, sino que, además, han llegado a la conclusión de que los culpables son... tachan...los funcionarios.
Soy funcionario. Y además bastante recalcitrante: tengo cinco títulos distintos. Ganados compitiendo en buena lid contra miles de candidatos. ¿Y saben qué? No me avergüenzo de nada. No debo nada a nadie (sólo a mi familia, maestros y profesores). No tengo que pedir perdón. No me tocó la lotería. No gané el premio gordo en una tómbola. No me expropiaron una finca. No me nombraron alto cargo, director provincial ni vocal asesor por agitar un carnet político que nunca he tenido.
Aprobé frente a tribunales formados por ceñudos señores a los que no conocía de nada. En buena lid: sin concejal proclive, pariente político, mano protectora ni favor de amigo. Después de muchas noches de desvelos, angustias y desvaríos y con la sola e inestimable compañía de mis santos cojones. Como tantos y tantos compañeros anónimos repartidos por toda España a los que ahora algunos mendaces quieren convertir, por arte de birli-birloque, en culpables de la crisis.
Amigos funcionarios, estamos rodeados de gente muy tonta y muy hija de puta.
PD. Si alguien, en cualquier contexto, os reprocha -como es frecuente- vuestra condición de funcionario os propongo el refinado argumento que yo utilizo en estos casos, en memoria del gran Fernando Fernán-Gómez: váyase Usted a la mierda, hombre, a la puta mierda.
SI eres funcionario pásalo a toda España. Si no lo eres y no estas de acuerdo, ¡váyase usted a la mierda!
18 March 2012
16 February 2012
02 January 2012
Letter to Michael Spagat
11 May 2009
Dear Michael Spagat,
Many people have been wondering why you have such a bee in your bonnet about the Lancet Iraq Mortality Studies. I don't. Its pretty obvious to me. Your own conflict of interest and that of colleagues such as Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks is patently obvious.
In previous research papers such as "Universal patterns underlying ongoing wars and terrorism", calculations and conclusions were made, based on data for civilian killings provided by: IBC! You are also intimately connected to CERAC (as is Dr. Hicks), whose own CERAC Integrated Iraq Dataset (CIID) "builds on the event description from three datasets that monitor violence in Iraq: Iraq Body Count , iCasualties and ITERATE." Further, the Dept. of Economics at the Royal Holloway, University of London, also uses IBC in its country specific datasets.
Let's be clear, using figures from an organization that itself admitted were an undercount of victims ("Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media") and then deleting figures from that undercount, as you did for example in the above mentioned paper, can only mean that the conclusions reached in these papers and indeed any other that used the IBC figures, have been seriously compromised, especially considering the numbers reported in the 2 Lancet studies. And this explains your mania with Lancet.
Apart from the conflict of interest, which you fail to mention in any of your work, you also have a strange tendency to attack any critics of the Colombian government of Uribe, connected in his early days in Medellín to the cocaine cartels, and recently to all sorts of human rights abuses. I wonder if the fact that some of your funding has come from Colombia's central bank: Banco de la República has anything to do with this, or is it simply an ideological thing?
In 2007 you took it upon yourself to attempt to discredit AI & HRW's reports on Colombia in your paper The Work of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: Evidence from Colombia. This work and your attempts to discredit these 2 NGOs is characterised by a clear attempt to reduce the figures of victims as well as attempting to muddy the waters regarding state complicity with the paramilitaries in the human rights atrocities in Colombia. This is comparable to the work of Holocaust deniers who look to reduce at all costs, the number of Jews killed in that horrific crime. As you yourself acknowledge "The free flow of accurate information on patterns of violence can make a critical contribution to conflict resolution. Yet warring parties tend to compete to distort the relevant information in their favor." One can see which warring party you are working for...
In "The Colombian Conflict: Uribe's First 17 Months (J. Restrepo and M. Spagat), CEPR Discussion Paper 4570, 2004" you stated: "paramilitary groups...neither belong to the institutional apparatus nor are under the command and control of the state" That has now been shown to have ignored the reality that there has been tight collaboration between both. Both AI & HRW challenged these suppositions and still do as their reply to your paper shows: "Recent revelations about the degree of paramilitary infiltration in various state institutions, including the security forces, the legislature, and the DAS appear only to have confirmed what AI and other NGOs have been saying publicly for years. In many cases, AI has found it difficult to separate security force from paramilitary responsibility in killings, since there is evidence of the involvement of both. In fact, in many cases in which the article might describe the evidence for collusion as being "soft", subsequent research and/or judicial investigations have corroborated AI’s initial claims."
As both HRW and AI reports challenged many of your basic assumptions, they too had to be discredited. However, as your work is based on false assumptions and inaccurate staistics, it is actually your work that should be discredited.
David Sketchley
Seville, Spain
Needless to say, a reply was never received.
Dear Michael Spagat,
Many people have been wondering why you have such a bee in your bonnet about the Lancet Iraq Mortality Studies. I don't. Its pretty obvious to me. Your own conflict of interest and that of colleagues such as Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks is patently obvious.
In previous research papers such as "Universal patterns underlying ongoing wars and terrorism", calculations and conclusions were made, based on data for civilian killings provided by: IBC! You are also intimately connected to CERAC (as is Dr. Hicks), whose own CERAC Integrated Iraq Dataset (CIID) "builds on the event description from three datasets that monitor violence in Iraq: Iraq Body Count , iCasualties and ITERATE." Further, the Dept. of Economics at the Royal Holloway, University of London, also uses IBC in its country specific datasets.
Let's be clear, using figures from an organization that itself admitted were an undercount of victims ("Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media") and then deleting figures from that undercount, as you did for example in the above mentioned paper, can only mean that the conclusions reached in these papers and indeed any other that used the IBC figures, have been seriously compromised, especially considering the numbers reported in the 2 Lancet studies. And this explains your mania with Lancet.
Apart from the conflict of interest, which you fail to mention in any of your work, you also have a strange tendency to attack any critics of the Colombian government of Uribe, connected in his early days in Medellín to the cocaine cartels, and recently to all sorts of human rights abuses. I wonder if the fact that some of your funding has come from Colombia's central bank: Banco de la República has anything to do with this, or is it simply an ideological thing?
In 2007 you took it upon yourself to attempt to discredit AI & HRW's reports on Colombia in your paper The Work of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: Evidence from Colombia. This work and your attempts to discredit these 2 NGOs is characterised by a clear attempt to reduce the figures of victims as well as attempting to muddy the waters regarding state complicity with the paramilitaries in the human rights atrocities in Colombia. This is comparable to the work of Holocaust deniers who look to reduce at all costs, the number of Jews killed in that horrific crime. As you yourself acknowledge "The free flow of accurate information on patterns of violence can make a critical contribution to conflict resolution. Yet warring parties tend to compete to distort the relevant information in their favor." One can see which warring party you are working for...
In "The Colombian Conflict: Uribe's First 17 Months (J. Restrepo and M. Spagat), CEPR Discussion Paper 4570, 2004" you stated: "paramilitary groups...neither belong to the institutional apparatus nor are under the command and control of the state" That has now been shown to have ignored the reality that there has been tight collaboration between both. Both AI & HRW challenged these suppositions and still do as their reply to your paper shows: "Recent revelations about the degree of paramilitary infiltration in various state institutions, including the security forces, the legislature, and the DAS appear only to have confirmed what AI and other NGOs have been saying publicly for years. In many cases, AI has found it difficult to separate security force from paramilitary responsibility in killings, since there is evidence of the involvement of both. In fact, in many cases in which the article might describe the evidence for collusion as being "soft", subsequent research and/or judicial investigations have corroborated AI’s initial claims."
As both HRW and AI reports challenged many of your basic assumptions, they too had to be discredited. However, as your work is based on false assumptions and inaccurate staistics, it is actually your work that should be discredited.
David Sketchley
Seville, Spain
Needless to say, a reply was never received.
The Shock Doctrine
A documentary adaptation Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. An investigation of disaster capitalism, based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism -- the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock -- did not begin with September 11, 2001.
The film traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.
New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism -- the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock -- did not begin with September 11, 2001.
The film traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.
New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
El Mono Egoista - The Selfish Ape
Increible documental sobre el primate egoísta: nosotros.
This documentary is trying to point out that despite the development of our civilization in this the 21st century, our genetic legacy is still there and the primate we used to be remains in us and determines our lives much more than we suspect.
The human being is not as smart as he thinks and has simply become a SELFISH APE.
Written and directed by Fernando López - Mirones
This documentary is trying to point out that despite the development of our civilization in this the 21st century, our genetic legacy is still there and the primate we used to be remains in us and determines our lives much more than we suspect.
The human being is not as smart as he thinks and has simply become a SELFISH APE.
Written and directed by Fernando López - Mirones
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