CINA

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Israel's war against Hamas/Gaza. The 12th day:

More than 660 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel's attack on Gaza, with nearly 3,000 wounded, according to int'l media reports.

Only few days ago (Jan. 01) E. Olmert 'promised': "We will treat the Palestinian civilians with kid gloves.." And yesterday we saw the reality: The Israeli army bombed an UNRWA school in Jabalya and at least 40 civilians were killed, seeking there shelter from IDF/IAF bombardment. PS: By doing so, they fully followed the instructions of the IDF, which for a week now has been urging Palestinian citizens – via leaflets, text messages, and public announcements – to evacuate their homes located in trouble-prone areas.

Following a selection of latest news and related articles:

..by Guardian (UK)
☞ Gaza's day of carnage - 40 dead as Israelis bomb two UN schools
☞ Shell-shocked children who are drawn into the cult of the martyr
☞ Gaza after a Hamas rout will be an even greater threat to Israel
☞ How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

☞ Interactive guide: Israeli attacks on Gaza

..by Al-Jazeera
☞ School hit piles pressure on Israel

..by Haaretz (IL)

☞ Israel postpones vote on expanding Gaza ground op as truce efforts grow

..by Asia Times (HK)

☞ Suicide by Israel
☞ Al-Qaeda sniffs opportunity in Gaza

Meanwhile (according to AP) Moussa Abou Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas's political bureau today said his group is studying peace initiatives to end the violence in Gaza Strip but rejects any permanent truce with Israel.
Already on Monday night the "prominent spriritual leader" (according to Palestinian sources) Waeel al-Zarad 'promised' in Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas' TV in Gaza) that "the Muslim blood vengeance against the Jews will only end with the complete extermination of the Jews"...

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On November 11th 2008, French "Anti-Terrorism Police" arrested around twenty people in connection with five incidents in the preceding weeks in which electric train lines were shut down, causing delays.

Nine of these were subsequently accused of “criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity” (*), four of them were released on bail and five remain in custody. Because many of the accused were arrested in Tarnac, a small village in the Corrèze region of central France, they have become know in the press as the “Tarnac 9".

They have been associated with certain political texts, including the journal Tiqqun and the bestselling book The Coming Insurrection, texts which the press has dubbed ”anarcho-autonomous” following the Ministry of "Justice" which has been conducting a crusade against this supposed movement for some time.

The Guardian (UK) published last Saturday (01.03)  a feature on the arrests of the Tarnac 9. It's sister paper The Observer followed this up with a pretty awful story titled 'France braced for 'rebirth of violent left'. Interesting in the story is the supposed thesis that the State reckons (or pretends to reckon) that a new wave of militant struggles is about to sweep Europe.

Well, here's the feature, published in last Saturday's Guardian:

Rural idyll or terrorist hub? The village that

police say is a threat to the state

High on a bleak mountain plateau in central France, the tiny village of Tarnac is fiercely proud of its grocer's shop. A smiling lady with a perm stands behind the old-fashioned till amid shelves stocked with everything from fly-swats and fairy lights to socks and soya milk. Elderly villagers boast that thanks to the shop, they don't have to leave their cottages to travel miles for bread in this vast, depopulated rural wilderness of central France known as "the desert". Posters advertise tea dances and cinema club screenings of Billy the Kid.

But the French government claims that Tarnac and its small shop are the headquarters of a dangerous cell of anarchist terrorists plotting to overthrow the state. Images of balaclava-clad police swooping to arrest suspects in Tarnac were compared by bewildered villagers to a strange, rural action movie. The government hinted that locals were too gormless to have noticed the terrorist activity in their midst. But after weeks of controversy, supporters are rising up to defend the young people of the village.

Known as the Tarnac Nine, four men and five women aged 22 to 34 are being investigated over far-left terrorism following dawn raids by police in November that targeted several addresses, including a farm with a few goats, chickens and vegetables. Those arrested include a Swiss sitcom actor, a distinguished clarinettist, a student nurse and Benjamin Rosoux, an Edinburgh University graduate who runs the grocer's shop and its adjoining bar-restaurant.

The alleged ringleader, Julien Coupat, 34, is still being held in prison despite a judge's ruling that he be released. A former business and sociology student from an affluent Parisian suburb, Coupat moved to Tarnac in search of a non-consumerist lifestyle, saying he wanted to live frugally. The poor village of 350 people is home to a growing number of young people who have escaped the city for a simple life and sense of community. Together, the newcomers ran the shop, a mobile delivery service, the restaurant, a cinema club and an informal library.

Police said Coupat and his archaeologist girlfriend had been under surveillance for months. The arrests followed six incidents of vandalism on France's high-speed railway lines, which caused delays for thousands of travellers but no casualties. Coupat and his girlfriend had allegedly been seen by police near a train line that was later vandalised.

The couple had come to the attention of the FBI months earlier when they took part in a protest outside an army recruitment centre in New York. They and acquaintances are said to have often travelled to protests and demonstrations such as a recent protest at a European summit on immigration at Vichy.

French police say Coupat was the author of an anonymous tract against capitalism and modern society, The Coming Insurrection. The Paris prosecutor said the group was intent on armed struggle and used the farm in Tarnac as a "meeting point and place of indoctrination" for "violent action". But France's Human Rights League, opposition politicians and intellectuals criticised the arrests as an attack on civil liberties and an abuse of France's draconian anti-terrorist laws. Defence lawyers say there is no evidence for terrorist charges.

Inspired by the indignant villagers of Tarnac, support committees for the Tarnac Nine have sprung up across France and in the US, Spain and Greece. In Moscow, supporters demonstrated outside the French embassy. A national protest is planned in Paris this month. The interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, has been challenged in parliament over the case but insists there are "concrete elements" to support terrorism charges.

In the bar adjoining Tarnac's grocery store, as farmers tucked into their lunch, Jérôme, 28, who moved from the city seeking an alternative lifestyle in Tarnac, said he knew those who had been arrested and had stayed at their farm. "The portrayal of this place has been absurd. The farm is a very collective place and the village has a convivial atmosphere, doors are always open. They say we lived a secretive existence hidden away in the woods. That's not true - the farm is beside the road. They talk of a 'group' when there is no group. They say there was a ringleader ... but there is no boss here, that's an absurdity. It's against our whole thinking."

He said the government was trying to create an idea of an "enemy within", branding all forms of leftwing demonstrations and activism as terrorism.

The government said those arrested did not have mobile phones in order to avoid being detected. Their supporters said there was poor network coverage in the area and they shunned mobile phones as consumerist.

Tarnac sits on the plateau of Millevaches in the northern corner of Corrèze, in rural Limousin, famous for its cattle, poverty and emigration. The surrounding countryside was used by the resistance during the second world war and the village, which for decades had a communist mayor, has long been leftwing.

Across the hill from the farm where Coupat was arrested, Thierry Letellier, the independent mayor of the neighbouring village, tended his sheep farm. He said: "They were my neighbours, helping me on the farm and selling my meat at the shop. They were kind, intelligent and spoke several languages. They were politicised, on the left and clearly anti-capitalist like lots of people here, but they were people active in community life who wanted to change society at a local level first. To say that they were the descendants of Baader-Meinhof or the Red Brigades with no proof, I'm completely against that."

He dismissed the interior minister's claims that it was easy for "terrorists" to move into a remote village where people were not very bright and wouldn't notice. "It's true that members of Eta [the Basque terrorist group] have been found in the area, but they were hidden, they had no support, no one knew them. These people were a key part of our community."

Coupat's well-connected doctor father said the government was using the case to "intimidate youth".

One man, drinking in Tarnac's bar, said: "Did they do something silly or not? It's on the news every night but we're no closer to the truth. I feel we're being manipulated."

Chopping wood outside his house, André Filippin, 65, said: "It's ridiculous. I see them at the shop every day of the year, I help them with their drains, they help me. They are people who came to Corrèze to change their lives, to help people. We don't view them as terrorists here."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/03/france-terrorism-tarnac-anarchists

For more information and updates:
☞ Support Committee for the Tarnac 9

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The S.K. ruling class and its state/gov't (MoJ/public prosecution dept./police..), according to yesterday's Korea Times (K.T.), would like to "delight" the progressive and labor movement with a very special "New Year Gift":

Communist Sympathizers, Strikers Face Crackdown
 

The nation's top prosecutor said Friday in his New Year's message that the prosecution will eradicate leftists spreading communist ideology.

Prosecutor General Lim Chae-jin said, "Those who deny the nation's pro-democracy identity and attempt to destabilize society are to be punished.''..

The chief prosecutor stressed harshness in punishing laborers organizing or participating in illegal (*) collective actions such as unauthorized strikes...

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/01/117_37259.html

* Surprise, surprise!! K.T. forgot (^^) to mention, that only the ruling class and its flunkies (i.e. the S.K. state/gov't..) defines what's "legal" or "illegal". Certainly, in case of doubt: Everything what comes from the "left", incl. the labor (and any other resistance) movement, is - as a matter of course - ILLEGAL!!

Somehow related:
☞ Police and protesters clash at weekend rally (Hankyoreh, 01.05)

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Israel's war against Hamas/Gaza. The 9th day:

Since nearly 24 hours the "long-awaited" ("eagerly-awaited" by Hamas and other Palestinian "resistance" organisations) IDF ground operation, the "2nd Phase" of its war against Hamas, takes place inside the Gaza Strip.

Yesterday in the late afternoon (local time in Gaza) Israel dramatically escalated its war with Hamas, sending thousands of troops and tanks pouring over Gaza's borders in a move designed to reoccupy parts of the northern Gaza Strip. Amid reports of fierce clashes inside Gaza, columns of military vehicles and what the army said was "a sizeable number of troops" moved across the border at several points, backed by an intense air and artillery bombardment.
The Israeli gov't ordered today the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, suggesting the operation will be expanded further. The army said it expected to be in Gaza "for many long days".

Gaza City, last night: attacked by IDF artillery..

Hamas leader Ismail Radwan "promised" y'day afternoon: "Gaza will be a graveyard for you (the IDF) and the aggression will not be a picnic. You have no choice but to stop the aggression and end the siege unconditionally. You will not enjoy security unless the Palestinian people enjoy it first."

Just 24 hours later y.net 'reported': "IDF chief of staff: Not much left from Hamas government in Gaza. Military Intelligence chief: They understand violating the lull was a strategic mistake."

For more latest news:
☞ Israel pushes deeper into Gaza (al-Jazeera, 01.04)

☞ Some 500 killed since start of Gaza op (y.net, 01.04)

☞ Our fighters inflicted heavy casualties in the ranks of IOF troops (PIC, 01.04)

☞ Shin Beth: Hamas has eased its demands.. (Haaretz, 01.04)

Related articles:
☞ Analysis: Who will come out on top? (Guardian, 01.03)

☞ Palestinian in Gaza chronicles life under bombardment (Guardian, 01.03)

☞ 'Even the Left Was in Favor of Striking Hamas' (Interview, Der Spiegel, 01.02)

Special reports:
☞ War On Gaza (al-Jazeera)

☞ Warfare in Gaza (Haaretz)

Related link:
☞ PFLP (Palestinian former M/L organisation)

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50 years after the Cuban Revolution:

"We Already Live in Capitalism" (*)

Yesterday the Caribbean Island marked the 50th anniversary of its revolution, but...

As hard times bite, Cubans show

little appetite for celebration

The revolutionary leader said history would judge him, but the daily struggle to survive is testing even his most loyal supporters

Carmen Gonce remembers the triumph of Cuba's revolution as the happiest day of her life. Fidel Castro and his guerrillas swept down from the Sierra Maestra and delivered the island from a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. People danced in the streets and welcomed the "bearded ones" into their homes. It was 1 January 1959 and a time for hope. "We were nearly all Fidelistas," she said.

Half a century later, the girl of 15 is a pensioner of 64 who watches sunsets over the Caribbean from a cracked chair on the balcony of her Havana home a few blocks from the Karl Marx theatre. Much has happened since that day, yet it seems close enough to touch. "It feels just like last year."

Gonce still supports the revolution's principles and is grateful for a recent heart bypass operation. "A top surgeon - and I didn't pay a cent!" But celebrating the anniversary is not an option. The former author and book editor is nearly destitute. She has no money for decent food, cooking oil or soap, let alone treats. So she will stay at home, follow the anniversary commemorations on TV and reflect on a process that has simultaneously inspired and impoverished her. "The ideals are good but the reality of daily life ... " Her voice trails off.

The ambivalence reflects the complex legacy of a revolution which invested in health and education, crushed dissent and provoked admiration and revulsion. Cuba reaches today's milestone with the echo of the prediction Fidel Castro made from the dock as a young revolutionary in 1953: "Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me." Well, did it?

Crisis

There is no disputing the revolution's durability. It survived the Bay of Pigs invasion, the missile crisis and the Soviet Union's collapse. Castro outlasted 10 US presidents and dodged countless CIA assassination attempts. Absolution or not, history will certainly remember him.

The anniversary coincides with a period of flux. Castro, 82, resigned as president last year because of an intestinal illness, but his recent partial recovery has revived his influence. His brother and successor, Raúl, 77, signalled modest reforms, but they have stalled. Barack Obama has promised to ease draconian US restrictions and shake up a policy pickled in vinegar since JFK.

"It feels that the end of the story has not been written. Nobody knows what is going to happen and that is unsettling," said Daniel Erikson, a Cuba expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based thinktank.

One safe bet, however, is that there will be no mass outpouring of jubilation to mark the anniversary, for a simple reason: living standards are dire. "Our situation is so precarious nobody wants to celebrate," said Gabriel Calaforra, 75, a former ambassador and high-ranking official. "There is almost total indifference. People are waiting for change."

The authorities have booked popular musicians for a free concert at the Anti-Imperialista Tribune on the Malecón, Havana's seafront, so there will be dancing. But joy, like so much else on the island, will be scarce. The struggle for decent food and basic goods makes people obsess about vegetables and conserving everything from soap to toilet roll. Few are in party mood.

Material hardship was eroding trust in the system, said Erikson. "A lot of people think the revolution has important accomplishments but pervasive scarcity puts economic questions at the front of their minds."

The government blames the long-standing US embargo. Unquestionably it has wrought havoc, but most analysts say communist central planning, stifling bureaucracy and lack of economic freedom have proved even more ruinous.

The state controls about 90% of the economy, obliging almost everyone to work for it, but pays an average monthly wage of about £12. A ration of rice, beans and other staples, and supposedly free public services, keeps people alive but does not avert grinding poverty.

To buy goods in the few decently stocked shops Cubans must change near worthless pesos into convertible pesos, a dual currency worth 24 times more that was designed for tourists.

"After I pay my rent I have $2 left for the month," said Miguel, 32, a whip-thin hospital doctor. As a favour, a European friend recently married Miguel to help him obtain an exit visa. "I want to get out," he said.

Poverty reeks from the decaying, overcrowded buildings of central Havana. Though from a distance they are picturesque, up close you see the grime and smell the plumbing. Likewise, the 1950s Chevrolets and Fords, surreal mechanical marvels, lose their charm if you are a sardine-wedged passenger or pedestrian choking on the fumes.

Cuba became dependent on tourism after the end of Soviet subsidies in 1991 triggered savage austerity and a need for foreign currency. With a casual tip dwarfing state wages, scientists, teachers and other professionals quit their jobs to become waiters, chambermaids and taxi drivers. "Our most brilliant minds - serving coffee," lamented Alvaro, a university lecturer turned tour guide.

Sidelines

Everyone has some type of sideline - selling knick-knacks, baking cakes, pilfering state resources. "A population of hustlers and mini-capitalists, that's how our communism survives," said Luis, 42, an academic who rears pigs in his garden.

The government knows its legitimacy and longevity hinge on raising living standards. After succeeding Fidel last year Raúl announced minor reforms: more privately-run farms and taxis, greater wage flexibility and permission to stay in hotels and buy computers, DVD players and mobile phones.

Some things have improved. Hundreds of Chinese-made buses have eased transport shortages and subsidised Venezuelan oil has helped to banish power blackouts. But reforms have stalled, disappointing Cubans and puzzling observers.

"It's in limbo. Raúl unleashed expectations but apart from agriculture very little is happening," said a senior diplomat.

The official explanation is that three summer hurricanes devastated crops and infrastructure, wrecking 500,000 homes and causing $10bn damage. The global economic downturn and a dive in nickel prices, a key export, have also hit state coffers, forcing Cuba to reschedule debt payments. The crippling US embargo compounds the woes.

There is suspicion that Fidel has been doing his bit to slow reforms since his health reportedly improved. His regular newspaper articles are sharper. "There's a sense, oh-oh, Fidel's back," said the diplomat. Raúl-inspired calls for bold self-criticism and a "revolution within the revolution" have ebbed.

In the absence of material improvements the revolution's legitimacy rests largely on healthcare and education, success stories that have given Cuba first-world rates of infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy and university graduations.

Gonce's bypass operation shows the system at its best. Many hospitals and polyclinics have been overhauled and modernised. But the system is creaking. Under a barter deal for Venezuelan oil more than 20,000 Cuban doctors are working overseas and foreign patients are leapfrogging queues. The result is delayed treatment and overworked staff, said Miguel, the doctor who hopes to emigrate.

Education is also under strain because so many teachers, fed up with low salaries and an ideology-imbued curriculum, have quit. Adolescents straight out of secondary school have been recruited to teach classes with the aid of video cassettes.

"Pupils are not encouraged to think freely, to develop their own ideas and curiosity," said Enrique, 25, a disillusioned teacher. "The other problem is purely economic. University students don't consider teaching to be something serious." Enrique has resigned from the Communist Youth organisation.

Loyal

Older Cubans who remember the corrupt tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, the US-backed dictator toppled 50 years ago, tend to be more loyal. "The thing is working," said Marilyn, a proud member of a Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, a neighbourhood network. "We have health, we have education."

Such fidelity is being tested by increasing inequality. Che Guevara's egalitarian dream long ago gave way to division between the dirt poor and those who have access to foreign currency through tourism jobs, remittances and government contacts.

Raúl's cautious reforms have underlined that split by giving the privileged minority more opportunities to consume. You see them snapping up Sony wide-screen televisions, Paco Rabanne perfume and Adidas trainers in shopping centres like La Puntilla, out of bounds to most but with a poster of Fidel's revolutionary exhortations at the entrance. Most Cubans are black or brown-skinned but most of the shoppers here are white - just as top government echelons are white.

"Equality was and still is supposed to be one of the pillars of the revolution but now there are people with loads of money," said Eduardo, 56, a historian. Too broke to treat his wife on their wedding anniversary, the former Young Communist was not minded to celebrate the revolution's.

Despite the sour mood there is little public protest or even graffiti. It would change nothing and you could get fined or jailed, so why bother, is a common refrain. Opposition parties are banned and by some counts there are more than 200 political prisoners. The government says they are US-paid mercenaries.

A rare demonstration in Havana by the "ladies in white", an organisation of relatives of jailed dissidents, was instructive. Clutching flowers and leaflets about human rights, about 30 chanted "liberty" from the steps of the Capitolio before filing through busy streets, tailed by plainclothes policemen. Not one passerby cheered the solemn procession. Lacking funds, media and grassroots organisation, the opposition is isolated and largely unknown. One European diplomat was blunt: "Dissidents are irrelevant."

For US policymakers that is reason to despair. They have long counted on the so-called "biological solution": when Fidel Castro died, his ramshackle regime would collapse. That has turned out to be wishful thinking. The commandante has seamlessly transferred power to Raúl and his inner circle.

Not only will the revolution outlast him, Fidel can die feeling vindicated. Not long ago he was an international pariah, but a new generation of leftist regional leaders has feted him as a symbol of Latin American pride and nationalism. And prescience: his critiques of imperialism and capitalism resonate in the light of the Iraq war and global economic crisis.

"Cuba is returning to where it always should have been," Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president, said at a summit last month. "We are complete." It is a view shared by centrist leaders such as Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentina's Cristina Kirchner. Largely for economic reasons, China and Russia, and to some extent the EU, have also courted Havana.

Final chapter

After half a century, Fidel Castro's experiment has significant accomplishments and glaring failures. Historians will struggle to untangle the political and social meaning. Diplomats will try to anticipate the next and possibly final chapter. It will be left to the 11 million people who live on the island to decide if the "bearded one" who swept down from the Sierra Maestra all those years ago is to be absolved.

For Luis Poey, 69, a guard at the entrance of the Association of Veterans of the Cuban Revolution, the answer was obvious. "In this country one lives proud all the time. We fought giants and that made us a giant." He jabbed his thick cigar. "We are still fighting."

Source: Guardian, UK (01.01)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/01/fidel-castro-raul-castro

* Yoani Sanchez, Cuba's "most famous" blogger (☞ Generación Y), according to the German daily Berliner Zeitung (08.12.29), explained the situation 50 years after the revolution...

Well, of course (!!), Cuba's "special friends" also noticed the anniversary (^^):
☞ Outside forces cannot end Cuba's revolution (Miami Herald, 01.01)

Related:
☞ "Wir leben schon im Kapitalismus" (Berliner Zeitung, 08.12.29)

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Sorry! But the New Year begins as it ended: with bad and bloody news (especially for the Palestinans)!
Israel's war against Hamas/Gaza. The 6th day.

Yesterday afternoon the German magazine Spiegel.Online had it "top" headline: "Israel's gound offensive is very unlikely" ("The majority of military analysts predicts.."). Only 12 hours later the article disappeared (so much for the "reputable" bourgeois journalism!!^^). Instead: today in the morning y.net (just as one example) headlined:

IDF: WE'RE READY FOR THE BATTLE!

But: No Problem! Olmert just today "promised": "We will treat the Palestinian civilians with kid gloves and provide humanitarian aid. We did not declare war on Gaza's residents, but we will deal with Hamas with an iron fist..", according to today's Yedioth Ahronoth (*).

Israeli and Palestinian reactions:

 
"That's it, its done, we are going in - in our own way, with our own surprises, fighting dirty, not like before. We reached the end of your bullshit. All is on the line, its no more crap. Gazans, join us to kill hamas/jihad or die with them. Hamas, don't drink the water underground,we are poisoning it. Ishamel-wait for us. haniyeh, you are on the list, say goodbye to your family. Zophar, we will not forget you."

Alexi, Israel (01.01.09)

"I was looking at TV tonight and I noticed the kind of races that form the israeli population (ethiopians, polish, russians, americans, moroccans...)
This army of mixed nationalities will be crushed by indigenous population because they have their roots in that land while you are a lost population without roots. just look at an ethiopian (who has clearly of ethiopian genes) what right can he claim on palestine??" (**)

Ibrahim, Gaza  (01.01.09)

"The victory is near, insha'Allah, and it's nearer as you think!", I. Haniyeh (Hamas' leader) said y'day in Al-Aqsa TV.

Hamas also writes TMs for Israeli citizens:

"Rockets on all cities, shelters not protect, Qassam rocket, Hamas."