Syria: is chemical weapon massacre totally false? - Updated

Last time that Damascus was accused by the West of using chemical weapons against civilians it ended up being the Islamist guerrillas and not the government. This time it seems it's just a total farce. Watch this video please:

Among other elements suggesting farce is this photo, which has been used several times to "document" various massacres:

It is not the first time it happens: in the past images borrowed from Iraq massacres have been used also to "document" alleged massacres in Syria. Recently I had to watch how a "corpse" (Egyptian context) suddenly "came back to life" to kick off a person who was ispecting too much and found no injury under the bandage.

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Update: Islamist close to Al Qaeda admits that they have chemical weapons. Video that shows apparently Islamists preparing a farce massacre scene.

Webguerrillero[es] reports, citing Syrian sources, that Abdolá al-Jaledi, an Islamist guerrilla close to Al Qaeda reported in his twitter account that they do have chemical weapons indeed. He wrote at the account @abo_almonthir:

Wouldn't it be for the confidentiality of the information, I would reveal who was the warrior, who built the said chemical weapons.

Syrian press has also spread two telephone calls that apparently show the implication of Islamists in chemical warfare.

The same newsblog posts this video showing what are apparently Islamists preparing a "massacre scene" for the international media (CNN+ and Al Jazeera, they say specifically - in Arabic):

It is said that they uploaded the video online accidentally had soon it was known to all.

Greece: police close social centers and free radio in Patras, 16 arrested

From Contra Info:

On August 5th, 2013, at about 6.30am, uniformed and plainclothes cops raided and evicted three squatted spaces in Patras, namely Parartima squat on the corner of Corinthou and Aratou streets, Maragopouleio squat on Gounari street, and the Self-managed Hangout inside the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Patras. All three squatted spaces were evicted and sealed off by police.

The repressive forces, aided by municipal authorities, confiscated various materials from the squats (including the equipment of the Patras free radio station Radio-Katalipsi 93.7FM), and even sealed up the entrance of Parartima squat with bricks.

A total of 16 comrades were detained: 5 squatters who resisted the raid from the rooftop of Maragopouleio squat, as well as 11 solidarians who tried to approach the squat while the eviction was underway. Soon thereafter, the 11 solidarians were released, but the 5 squatters from Maragopouleio are facing charges and were kept in custody at the police headquarters on Ermou street, where comrades held a solidarity gathering earlier in the morning. Also, at midday, a counter-information gathering took place at Olgas square.

Later the 5 arrestees appeared before public prosecutor and were all released, scheduled to appear in court on August 6th.

Japan's first astronaut on Fukushima catastrophe

Japan Times has an extensive interview with Toyohiro Akihama, the first ever Japanese astronaut, who was also the first journalist in space. Some time after his adventure, he moved to the countryside to experience the agricultural life, with the bad luck of ending up just 60 km from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The whole interview is of interest but he has something to say in particular about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and how Japan mismanages it:

In the world of engineering, you can’t have “absolute safety” — that’s why the “nuclear village” engineers can’t be trusted. How can they say nuclear power plants are absolutely safe? That’s not possible. Experts who call something safe when it can’t possibly be safe are living in a world of religion, not science.

(...)

I had reported on the fifth anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster (in present-day Ukraine) and the Three Mile Island accident (in Pennsylvania in 1979), so I knew all too well what the governments of the U.S. and Russia had done. 

I had read books on how the Japanese government has dealt with nuclear accidents in the past. When there’s an emergency, what the authorities try to do is to maintain “law and order.” What is order? It’s protecting the system presiding at the time. (...) What does maintaining order mean to them? To maintain the order of the existing “nuclear village.”

(...)

What gave me the best pointer was the fact that President Barack Obama ordered all Americans to evacuate from within a 50-mile (80 km) radius (of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant). There was no better message than that. The government was bound to lie.

(...)

In Kyoto (where he now lives) we had a welcoming outcome (in July 21′s Upper House elections), with a member of the (antinuclear) Japanese Communist Party winning a seat. I don’t particularly like the JCP and I’m not a communist — if anything, I’d be more black than red (laugh). But when I read the statements by all the candidates running for the Upper House from Kyoto, nobody except for the JCP candidate said they were clearly opposed to the restart of nuclear reactors.

So the antinuclear voice was clearly expressed in the election. But the mass media failed to inform the voters. They treated the nuclear-power issue almost like a good luck charm. And Tepco only announced after the election that radioactive water from the Fukushima plant had seeped into the groundwater and flowed into the sea — but they should’ve known that already! Isn’t this media control? So my biggest theme at the moment is to stop the restart of nuclear reactors in Japan.

Fascist USA: journalists not allowed to keep their sources secret

In yet another example showing that the United States is not a democracy but an authoritarian state, a court has ruled (against many precedents and a long-established tradition) that journalists can't keep their sources secret. They applied a century-old emergency law (WWI) which was before only used in three cases.

From Russia Today:

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that New York Times journalist James Risen must testify in the trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency officer accused of leaking classified national defense information to the media.

A lower court ruled previously that Risen could protect the source responsible for sharing intelligence about a CIA operation discussed in his writing, but the US Court of Appeals from the Fourth Circuit reversed that decision Friday morning with a 2-1 vote. 

“The reporter must appear and give testimony just as every other citizen must. We are not at liberty to conclude otherwise,” Chief Judge William Traxler Jr. wrote for the majority opinion.

The trial is about Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent accused of leaking a Clinton-era plan to deceive Iran into using faulty nuclear weapon blueprints. There are other six people accused.

.

Honduras: kidnapped journalist found dead

Aníbal Barrow (pictured), who was kidnapped weeks ago, was found dead in a shallow tomb not far from where his clothes were located, near San Pedro Sula.

Before Barrow at least 27 journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the 2009 coup:

1. Nicolás Asfura: 17-Feb-2010.
2. Josep Hernández: 1-Mar-2010.
3. David Meza Matamoros: 11-Mar-2010
4. Nahúm Palacios: 14-Mar-2010.
5. Manuel de Jesús Juárez: 26-Mar-2010
6. Bayardo Ramírez: 26-Mar-2010.
7. Luis Chévez: 11-Apr-2010
8. Georgino Orellana: 20-Apr-2010.
9. Carlos Salinas: 8-May-2010.
10. Luis Mondragón: 14-Jun-2010
11. Israel Zelaya: 24-Aug-2010.
12. Henry Suazo: 28-Dec-2010.
13. Luis Ernesto Mendoza: 19-Mar-2011.
14 Erick Martínez Ávila: 7-May-2012.
15. Héctor Medina: 11-May-2011
16. Adán Benítez: 5-Jul-2011.
17. Nery Jeremías Orellana: 13-Jul-2011.
18. Medardo Flores: 8-Sep-2011.
19. Luz Marina Paz: 6-Dec-2011.
20. Saira Fabiola Almendárez: 1-Mar-2012
21. Fausto Elio Hernández: 11-Mar-2012
22. Noel Valladares Escoto: 23-Apr-2012.
23. Alfredo Villatoro: 15-May-2012
24. Adonis Felipe Bueso Gutiérrez: 8-Jul-2012
25. José Noel Canales Lagos: 10-Aug-2012
26. Julio César Cassaleno: 28-Aug-2012
27. Angel Edgardo López Fiallos: 11-Nov-2012

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Cuba: Anarchist media arise in spite of censorship

Cuba also has many shadows. Until a few decades for example homosexuality was illegal and persecuted, fortunately this changed radically. But the persecution of communist libertarian (Anarchist) ideas and organizations, while less intense than in the past, is still ongoing. Therefore the shy rise of these media is to be welcomed and announced. 

Among these there is an irregular and so far clandestine newspaper ¡Tierra Nueva! (New Earth!), which invites to collaborate to all interested people except those who somehow live of others' work.

Anarchists fought in Cuba side by side with Castro and Che but, after the success of the Revolution, were persecuted by a regime that leaned too much in favor of the authoritarian Stalinist model. 

I can only hope that Cuba preserves the socialization of the economy while improving the grassroots participation and freedom of speech, as I believe is doing already to some extent. Not yet enough obviously.

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Honduras: fear for kidnapped journalist

A bullet shot, a cap, a dental prosthesis and blood stains were found in the van of  journalist Aníbal Barrow, 58, who was kidnapped yesterday in San Pedro Sula.

It seems that the shot was fired from inside the vehicle.

Barrow was kidnapped by four men, according to other people present (co-worker and relatives of the victim). The kidnappers drove a white car without plates.

Source: LINyM[es].

Spanish actor Willy Toledo moves to Cuba and speaks out again

Guillermo "Willy" Toledo has won several prizes but he is best known maybe for his compromise with popular struggles in Spain and abroad alike, as well as his blunt honesty. Recently he announced he is moving to Cuba because he feels the need to be in direct contact with the lively dynamics of Latin America. Digital Newspaper Webguerrillero reproduces today an interview[es] with him, of which I translate some small fragments:

They have always told me: "if you like Cuba so much, why don't you move there". Well, I am already in Cuba... I imagine now the chief editors and the lackeys of their masters in the newspapers' redactions squeezing their brains to see how they could discredit me and all they could muster was that one: to publish a photo of a mansion with butlers, chaffeur and swimming pool... and all the fantasized privileges that the Cuban state gives those who defend it... well, it is radical and absolutely false. 

...

I am aware that I have been vetoed [in Spain, because of his compromise with Cuba] for various jobs in TV and cinema. What dimension does this have? I can't say because, excepting all these cases that I know for sure, I will never get to know if they said: "don't give this job to Willy Toledo". I am persuaded that this happens, exactly the same that there are dozens or even hundreds of political prisoners in my country just for expressing their opinions, just for being activists of the Left, of the Revolutionary Left especially, be it in the Basque Country, in Madrid, in Andalusia, in Catalonia wherever... Recently some Catalan Anarchists were arrested just for expressing their opinions in Facebook; that is the democratic state we live in. I am, I have always been very conscious of the consequences that being active in the Left, or the "extreme left" as they say, may carry.

... I keep an eye in Spain and when they need me I will be back there. When everything explodes, because it will explode, there will be a social uprising and there will be a true frontal opposition in the streets against the criminal government ruling in the Spanish state, I will be the first one to join. 

... would not I be a well-known actor I would probably be in jail right now, in prison in Spain; that is the sensation I have, they have tried it a couple of times but I think they calculated that having me in prison is not in their interest... by the moment, because there are many young men and women in jail who never had the media repercussion that there was the two times I was arrested.

Note: he was arrested once at a protest in the Spanish Congress in solidarity against the Moroccan massacre of the Peace and Dignity Camp of Gdeim Izik, West Sahara. Then he was also arrested when participating in a General Strike picket, suffering, as many others, false accusations. 

In the case of the General Strike many comrades who were arrested that very same night were kept prisoners for months in the jails of the Spanish state where - according to the European Union, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and local anti-torture groups - still today, in the year 2013, prisoners are brutally tortured in police stations and prisons, something that never happened in Cuba. 

Spain: two photo-journalists arrested and defamed in clear assault against free press

Because to photograph police brutality is no crime
free arrested photo-journalists!

Spanish police forces arrested yesterday two photographers and journalists. The arrested are Raúl Capín, collaborator with Diario Independiente Digital and Mundo Obrero (medium of the Communist Party), and Adolfo Luján (freelance).

The major accusation against Capín, which seems totally made up (the usual), is aggression against police forces. Another accusation is that he would have helped to run away some people whom police tried to arrest. The alleged acts would have happened while he covered popular protests in Madrid on February 23rd and April 25th.

Luján is also being accused of aggression against police forces on April 25th (the usual accusation that police throws around taking advantage of the Spanish penal code, which considers police testimony as "evidence" of much greater weight than that of any common witness, not needing any actual evidence to back up their claims). He's also being accused of defamation for writing at Mundo Obrero that the rioters on that journey appeared to be plain clothes police agents.

Police harasses Rául Capín while working

Prior to the arrest, some far-right Spanish media, ABC, El Mundo, have been carrying a campaign against them, accusing them to be "radicals infiltrated" among the press.

Defense lawyers think that it is a warning message against independent media, because both photographers are well known for reporting without self-censorship on popular demonstrations of all kinds. They had been previously harassed by police.

A protest has been called for today at 18:00. The exact location I could not find out because the reference site tomalaplaza.net seems to be overloaded, so high is the popular interest on these clearly political arrests.

Sources[es]: Naiz Info, DID, Mundo Obrero.

At Twitter: #raullibertad, #adolfolibertad.