El Suicidio de Maleva Ferreyra

This is the Spanish translation of Public Suicide Fad Hits Argentina by Frederick Furby from Argentina.

I am looking for people to to translate this post into German and Korean. Email me if you are interested.

French translation here (en Français).

Warning! Graphic footage! Do not watch if you are easily upset!

La moda del suicidio público se ha expandido a Argentina. Arriba esta el video en vivo del suicidio de Mario "Malevo" Ferreyra, un ex-funcionario policial argentino. Se suicidó en vivo en la televisión en la provincia de Tucumán, Argentina. Hay una version de 8,4 MB del video con mejor resolución que se puede descargar en este sitio.

Malevo Ferreyra era Jefe de la Brigada de Investigaciones de Estado de Tucumán en Argentina en los finales de 1970 en el apogeo de la Guerra Sucia. En 1993, fue condenado por asesinar a tres ladrones en 1991.

Él se escapó de la corte agarrando una granada de mano en cada mano (!) y más tarde se entregó después de que el ex gobernador de la provincia redujera su sentencia. Cumplió siete años por los asesinatos. Él gobernó Tucumán con mano de hierro, antes, durante y después de la Guerra Sucia.

Se emitió una orden de arresto contra él por la Guardia Nacional ayer por secuestro y tortura durante la Guerra Sucia. Los crímenes fueron cometidos cuando se sirvió en un depósito secreto de armas convertido en un centro de detencion durante la Guerra Sucia. Justo antes de que la policía viniera a arrestarlo, se suicidó enfrente de su esposa e hijos en TV nacional.

Él recien terminaba la entrevista con el canal de TV Cronica en la cima de un tanque de agua en su casa rural en Tucumán. Su casa estaba rodeada por policias y él iba a ser arrestado en pocos minutos. El protesto su inocencia, y después dijo "Hasta siempre, Maria (te amare por siempre, Maria)," desenfundó una pistola calibre .45 de su bota y se disparó detrás de la oreja. Murió camino al hospital unos momentos después.

Después de que se disparara en la cabeza, su hijo lo abrazo y su hija entró en pánico.

Familiares de las víctimas dijeron que el suicidio era parte de un pacto de silencio que aseguraba que Ferreyra no testificara contra sus ex-colegas.

La política argentina es asquerosa, y algunas veces mortal, negocios, con mucha impunidad, pero eso parece que esta cambiando.

Una foto típica de "El Malevo" con su usual sombrero. Parece una forma dificil de vivir compañeros. Su nombre tal vez viene de la famosa película muda de un muy conocido director argentino José A. Ferreyra (mismo apellido) de 1921 llamada La Maleva. No estoy seguro de qué trata la película. Ferreyra es un apellido común en Argentina. El nombre puede ser también en honor a un famoso futbolista argentino llamado Osmar "Malevo" Ferreyra (video).

Aquí hay otra foto de "El Malevo". No estoy seguro de qué esta pasando aca, ni quién es la mujer. Él parece tener un caracter muy rudo. Al igual que esos hombres al rededor de él. La política provincial argentina es desagradable, es cosa dura y difícil. Una especie de mezcla entre siciliano y mexicano. Muchos de los tipos duros en el poder usan todo su peso político, no nada de constitucional, las detenciones políticas y los ataques, el hostigamiento y los ataques a periodistas, jueces corruptos y venales. Las cosas usuales.

Tucumán es un algo en retroceso, "central" provincia en el interior de la Argentina. Es agrícola allí en su mayoría, con una gran cantidad de cultivo de caña de azúcar. Los policías y los políticos en esta parte de la Argentina son algunos de los más brutales, venales, exclusivistas y corruptos del país.

La Mode du Suicide en Public Arrive à l'Argentine

This is the French translation of the Public Suicide Fad Comes to Argentina post, translated by Natalie from France.

I am looking for people to to translate this post into German and Korean. Email me if you are interested.

Spanish version (en Español).

Attention! Personnes sensibles s’abstenir!!!

La mode du suicide en public s’est répandue en Argentine. Ci-dessus la vidéo du suicide en direct à la télé de Mario « Malevo » Ferreyra, un ancient policier. Il s’est suicidé en direct dans la province de Tucumàn en Argentine. Ici vous pouvez télécharger la vidéo avec une résolution plus haute.

Malevo Ferreyra était le chef de la brigade d’investigation de l’état du Tucumàn en Argentine dans les dernières années ’70 au plus fort de la sale guerre. En 1993, il fut condamné pour le meurtre de trois voleurs en 1991.

Il s’est échappé du tribunal en empoignant une grenade dans chaque main et plus tard s’est livré à la police après que le gouverneur de la province ait réduit sa peine. Il a fait sept ans de prison pour les meurtres. Il a dirigé Tucuman d’une main de fer, pendant et après la sale guerre.

Le mandat d’arrêt emis hier par la Garde Nationale pour enlevement et torture durant la sale guerre. Les crimes ont été commis alors qu’il était en service dans un dépôt secret d’armes « déguisé » en centre de détention. Juste avant que la police vienne l’arrêter, il s’est suicidé devant sa femme, ses enfants et les caméras de la télé nationale.

Il venait à peine de terminer une interview pour la chaine Cronica, juché sur une citerne d’eau, dans sa demeure à Tucuman. Sa maison était cernée par la police et il aurait été arrêté sous peu. Il a clamé son innocence, puis dit « Hasta siempre, Maria (je t’aimerai toujours Maria), ensuite il a sorti son calibre 45 de sa botte et s’est tiré une balle derrière l’oreille. Il est mort sur le chemin de l’hôpital peu après.

Après qu’il se soit tiré dans la tête, son fils l’a pris dans ses bras et sa fille a paniqué.

Les familles des victimes ont affirmé que le suicide faisait part d’un pacte secret qui assurerait que Ferreyra ne puisse témoigner contre ses anciens collègues.

La politique argentine est moche, et quelquefois mortelle, les affaires se font parfois en toute impunité, mais il parait que cela est en train de changer.

Une image typique de "el malevo" avec son sombrero habituel. Un air de mauvais garçon. Le nom vient peut-être du film muet dirigé par le très connu réalisateur argentin José A. Ferreyra de 1921 appelé La Maleva. Je ne suis sûr de l’histoire du film. Ferreyra est un nom de famille très répandu en Argentine. Le nom pourrait venir aussi d’un jeu de mots sur le pseudo d’un footballeur argentin nommé Osmar "Malevo" Ferreyra (vidéo).

Voici une autre photo de El Malevo. Je ne suis pas sûr de ce qu’il se passe ici, ni de qui soit la femme. C’est un individu brutal et les gars qui sont avec lui le sont également. La politique locale est extrêmement pourrie. Une sorte de croisement entre la Sicile et le Mexique. Un tas des robustes gars au pouvoir sévissaient dans le coin, pas trop légalement, commettant des arrestations arbitraires, agressions, harcèlement à des journalistes, corruption de juges. Comme d’habitude.

Tucuman se trouve quelque peu en arrière, c’est une province de l’arrière-pays argentin. Très rurale, avec beaucoup de champs de canne à sucre. Les flics et les hommes politiques de cette partie de l’Argentine sont parmi les plus brutaux, avides, fermés et corrompus du pays.

Il y a encore des Indiens qui vivent dans cette partie d’Argentine et les gens sont bien plus métissés que dans le reste du pays. Ce n’est pas la terre des gauchos et non plus la Pampa. Ça ressemble plutôt aux contreforts des Andes.

Dans le milieu des années 70 cette région fut le fief du mouvement d’un foyer révolutionnaire peu connu, piloté par le ERP (l’armée révolutionnaire du peuple). Il a échoué comme tous les autres mouvements. Le ERP fut ensuite anéanti par la sale guerre, il a abandonné la lutte armée et est devenu un mouvement politique qui existe encore aujourd’hui.

Quelqu’un veut un Budd Dwyer? Ici la vidéo de son suicide en direct à la télé (attention). Le sang sort de son nez comme une cascade....

J’ai trouvé le dossier de Christine Chubbuck, un autre suicide en public, cette fois d’une présentatrice de journal télévisé pendant son émission (!), c’est particulièrement poignant.

Trouble de la personnalité évitante.

Je n’aime pas diagnostiquer la mort, mais il semble qu’elle ait les symptômes du trouble de la Voilà une bonne vue d’ensemble de la maladie. Je pense que je n’ai jamais rencontré une personne ayant ces symptômes. Le signe principal est une grande susceptibilité au rejet ou au refus. J’ai connu des gens ayant en partie ce symptôme, si on les critique ils semblent sur le point de fondre en larmes, souvent ils se mettent en colère. Et ce sont des adultes, mûrs, de 40 ans. Je pense qu’ils sont des bébés, mais peut-être devrais-je être plus indulgent, car je ne suis moi-même pas tout à fait normal.

Je consultais un psychanalyste dans le temps, à qui j’ai demandé si j’étais un "évitant." Un de mes jeux favoris est le syndrome du patient psychiatrique , il consiste à parcourir le DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Manuel Diagnostic et Statistique des Troubles Mentaux.) en ayant peur d’avoir toutes les maladies du livre. Il m’a répondu que non, parce qu’il m’avait critiqué et que je l’avais bien pris. Il a dit qu’il avait eu 7 ou 8 évitants, et que dès qu’on les critiquait en thérapie ils se levaient et partaient du cabinet pour ne plus jamais revenir. C’est dire la gravité de la chose.

Pour dire la vérité, je ne me soucis guère que les gens m’aiment ou pas, tant qu’ils ne me tournent pas autours. Je serais très content d’avoir de jolies femmes qui viennent par ici tous les jours, me baisent, en prétendant m’aimer, alors qu’elles me détestent profondément. Tant qu’elles prétendent que je leur plait, tout va bien. Peu m’importe ce qui ce passe dans l’âme autrui.

Je ne crains pas non plus d’être rejeté. Au bout d’un million de fois, on s’habitue. J’imagine que si j’étais effrayé par chaque refus essuyé, je serais probablement tout le temps dépressif. On doit s’y faire, tout le monde n’est pas obligé de vous aimer, nous sommes dans un pays libre. De plus, j’ai moi-même rejeté des tas de gens, donc on récolte ce que l’on sème.

Chubbuk semblait être dans un terrible état de régression, presque une enfant lorsqu’elle quittait le boulot, en dépit d’une grande professionnalité au travail. Un cas étrange.

Je n’avais jamais entendu parler du cas Dwyer ou Chubbuck avant internet.

Il n’y a pas de vidéo disponible concernant le suicide de Chubbuck, mais ici il y a une courte séquence d’elle sur Youtube. Il y a aussi un morceau tiré de Boulevard of Broken Dreams, une émission de variété (video). La police a confisqué tous les enregistrements du suicide, comme preuves, puis les a remis à la famille.

Dans l’excellent film Network (1976) le personnage principal, un présentateur télé menace de suicider en direct.

Public Suicide Fad Hits Argentina

I am looking for people to to translate this post into German and Korean. Email me if you are interested.

French translation here (en Français). Spanish version (en Español).

Warning! Graphic footage! Do not watch if you are easily upset!

The public suicide fad has spread to Argentina. Above is the video of the live TV suicide of Mario "Malevo" Ferreyra, an Argentine former police official. He killed himself on live TV in Tucumán Province, Argentina. An 8.4 MB version of the video with better resolution can be downloaded on this site here.

Malevo Ferreyra was Chief of the Brigade of Investigations of the State Tucumán in Argentina in the late 1970's at the height of the Dirty War. In 1993, he was convicted for murdering three robbers in 1991.

He escaped from the courthouse clutching a hand grenade in each hand (!) and later turned himself in after the former governor of the province reduced his sentence. He served seven years for the killings. He ruled Tucumán with an iron fist before, during and after the Dirty War.

A warrant was issued by the National Guard yesterday for his arrest for kidnapping and torture during the Dirty War. The crimes were committed when he served at a secret weapons-depot-turned-detention center during the Dirty War. Just before the police were coming to arrest him, he committed suicide in front of his wife and kids on national TV.

He had just finished an interview the TV station Cronica on top of a water tank at his rural home in Tucumán. His home was surrounded by police and he would be arrested shortly. He protested his innocence, then said, "Hasta siempre, Maria (I will love you forever, Maria)," pulled out a .45 caliber revolver from his boot and shot himself behind the ear. He died on his way to the hospital shortly afterward.

After he shot himself in the head, his son embraced him and his daughter panicked.

Families of the victims say that the suicide was part of a pact of silence that would ensure that Ferreyra would not have to testify against his former colleagues.

Argentine politics is nasty, and sometimes deadly, business, with a lot of impunity, but that seems to be changing.

A typical image if "El Malevo" with his usual sombrero. Looks like a hard-living fellow. The name may come from a famous silent movie by the well-known Argentine director José A. Ferreyra (same surname) from 1921 called, La Maleva. I'm not sure what the movie is about. Ferreyra is a common surname in Argentina. The name may also be a play on a nickname of a famous Argentine soccer player Osmar "Malevo" Ferreyra (video).


Here is another photo of El Malevo. I'm not sure what is going on here, or who the woman is. He looks like a pretty rough character. So do those guys around him. Argentine provincial politics is nasty, hardcore stuff. Sort of a cross between Sicily and Mexico. Lot of tough guys in power throwing their weight around, not much of a rule of law, political arrests and attacks, harassment of and attacks on journalists, corrupt and venal judges. The usual stuff.

Tucumán is a somewhat backwards, "provincial" province in the hinterlands of Argentina. It's mostly agricultural back there, with a lot of sugar cane cultivation. The cops and politicians in this part of Argentina are some of the most brutal, venal, clannish and corrupt in the country.

There are still Indians living in this part of Argentina, and people are much more Mestizo here than in the rest of the country. It isn't gaucho country, and it's not the Pampas. More like the foothills of the Andes.

In the mid-70's, this province was the scene of a little-known foco revolutionary movement led by the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army). It failed, as all foco-inspired movements did. The ERP was then devastated by the Dirty War - they were history 1 1/2 years into the counterinsurgency. The ERP has long since abandoned armed struggle and now exists as a political movement.

Budd Dwyer, anyone? Video of Budd Dwyer's live TV suicide here (warning: graphic). Jesus Christ man, the blood runs out of his nose like a waterfall.

I found the case of Christine Chubbuck, another public suicide, this time of a newscaster on live TV during her broadcast (!) to be particularly poignant.

I don't like to diagnose the dead, but it looks like she had traits of Avoidant Personality Disorder . It's something like social phobia, but a lot more pervasive. What's odd is that she had such an extroverted job and most avoidants are serious introverts.

The symptoms are there: the lack of romantic relationships despite a tremendous desire for one and her beauty, good job, education and brains; the unrequited love for a colleague at work who would not reciprocate.

And at the same time, whenever people at work made friendly gestures towards her, she would blow them off. This is the "get them before they get me" mentality. I will reject them before they reject me. It's perverse, but like a lot of perverse stuff, has its own crazy logic.

Good overview of APD. I don't think I have ever known one. The primary symptom is extreme hypersensitivity to rejection. I've known people who have some of the hypersensitivity though. If you criticize them, they look like they are going to burst into tears. Then they often get really angry. These are grown "adults", say 40 years old. I think they are babies, but maybe I should be kinder, since I'm not exactly normal myself.

I had a therapist once and I asked him if I was an avoidant. One of my games is "Psychiatric Medical Patient Syndrome" - going through the DSM and worrying I have every illness in the book. He said, no, because he had criticized me and I took it well. He said he had had 7-8 avoidants, and as soon as you criticize them in therapy, they get up and walk out of the office and never come back. That's about the size of it.

Truth is, I really don't care if people like me or not, as long as they hang around with me. I would be perfectly content to have beautiful women coming over here every day, screwing my brains out, pretending to like me, but actually hating my guts. As long as they pretend to like me, it's all good. I don't care what's in someone's deepest soul.

I'm also not freaked out by rejection. After about the millionth time, you pretty much get used to it. I figure if I freaked out about every little rejecting encounter I get, I'd probably be continuously suicidally depressed. You have to make it through life somehow. No one has to like you anyway, it's a free country. Plus I've rejected lots of people myself, so what comes around, goes around.

Chubbuck also seemed to be awfully regressed into an almost childhood state when off work, despite being an uber-professional on the job. Strange case.

I had never heard of Dwyer's or Chubbuck's case until the Internet.

There are no available videos of the Chubbuck suicide, but there are five seconds of Chubbuck footage here on Youtube. There is also a Chubbuck segment on The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a TV show (video clip). The police confiscated all of the Chubbuck suicide tapes as evidence of a crime and turned them over to the family.

In the excellent movie Network (1974) "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!", the lead, a TV newscaster, threatens to commit suicide on live TV.

The Zwi Migdal - Jewish Pimps of Argentina

Interesting stuff. Ynet has some great articles about the Jews.

Every society with prostitution has its pimps, of course.

In the US, pimping seems to be dominated by Blacks. I haven't heard of many White pimps, but I guess they exist. Part of the sickness and baseness of US Black ghetto culture is the glorification of the pimp and the streetwalker. We haven't many Blacks around here, but the few pimps and streetwalkers around here are almost always Black.

I understand that Albanians dominate the prostitution trade in the UK.

The anti-Semitic image of Jew as pimp and peddler of filth and depravity (Peddle some my way!) lacks a sound basis. However, in Argentina, Brazil, Poland and the Ukraine, Jews dominated the prostitution trade.

In one case, in Poland around 1910, there was a Jewish pogrom against the pimps! Pogroms in Poland around this time were often organized around the theme of "Jews are prostituting our women," and the local Jews had had enough. I think that 100 pimps were killed in this pogrom. I'm not sure if they killed prostitutes too.

It's an anti-Semitic lie that due to Jewish dual morality, Jews will only prostitute Gentile girls. The evil Jews are turning out our pure White women! In the case of the Zwi Migdal, it looks like they were only prostituting Jewish girls. I understand that the pimps of Israel (where there is a thriving sex trade) often traffic in Jewish in addition to Gentile women).

The Zwi Migdal were not supported by the Jewish community at large, to its credit. It lasted from 1870-1930.

Even by the turn of the century, Argentina had a very large Jewish population and it still has about 400,000 Jews.

Click the link for more.

Multiculturalism and Socialism: The Odd Couple

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated September 2:

In the comments section, Scott, who is a White nationalist, discusses the disconnect between multiculturalism and socialism or social democracy.

Yes, we do allow White nationalists, even anti-Black ones, on the board, but every time a cute Black woman shows up on the board, we force them to kiss her. On the lips. On penalty of banning. None have left yet. Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?

Scott says:

Look at the countries that have the highest index of egalitarianism in the West: Iceland, Norway, Sweden (used to have more). The inhabitants are all pretty closely related to one another. I'll spot my sibling $100 cash.

It's basically the same thing but in a less dramatic way in such countries, but when other nationalities come in because of the aforementioned ethnostates' welfare system, as seek to take advantage of it, the whole system gets messed up. Find me an ethnically diverse country with a social democracy.

I respond:

Scott is right. Does the UK count as a multicultural country? If it does, it's growing a nasty White racist - fascist party of reaction to the diversity in the BNP.

Does Venezuela count? If Venezuela counts, I would say that Venezuela is a country riven with violence, tension and class war. There seems to be a racial angle, but in the upper class and upper middle class, it's really more about class than race. Nevertheless, it's clear that the oligarchy is much more light-skinned than the Underclass that supports Chavez.

Is multicultural Russia a social democracy? Maybe so, but it's riven from one end to the other with horrible racism.

Do Communist states like China and Cuba count? Maybe so, but those countries, probably due to the class warfare (in the case of both) and combined class/race warfare (in the case of Cuba) inherent in their societies, needed full, bloody Communist revolutions to institute any kind of socialist system.

Vietnam and Laos are multiethnic countries, but the Lao and the Vietnamese are the overwhelming majority. They also needed Communist revolutions to put in socialism.

I would say Sri Lanka. They have a pretty good social democracy there, and the ruling party is a member of the Socialist International. There's also a horribly vicious civil war going on, because that "socialist" party in power has never done much to help the Tamils.

Socialist parties in Chile, Argentina and Brazil haven't been able to get much done. In Chile and Argentina the problem is probably much more class than race. In Brazil, surely it's both race and class together. The socialists in Ecuador and Bolivia are trying to get something done, but Bolivia is riven with a horrific class/race division and it's almost civil war there.

I don't think that the socialist parties in Nicaragua and Guatemala will be able to get much done. Both nations had Leftist revolutions for decades, in the case of Nicaragua followed by a revolutionary government and more civil war, this time counterrevolutionary. Nicaragua was always more about class than race, but the oligarchy is light-skinned. In Guatemala, the situation is very much about both class and race riven together.

One thing becomes clear in this analysis.

The only way to peacefully vote in a socialist or social democratic government is to have a relatively homogeneous society. Typically a White society. As diversity and multiculturalism increases, even in White European countries, White racist/fascist groups rise up for various reasons and racial violence against minorities becomes common.

In multiethnic or deeply class-riven nations (Note how often the two are conflated!), socialism, social democracy or movements towards them is typically accompanied by either outright civil war, de facto civil war, tremendous open class war in terms of coups, attempted coups, lockout strikes, riots, imperialist interventions, class-based separatist movements, and much violence.

In other places, socialist governments are not able to get much done due to deep class and race-based conflicts and the threat of violence from dominant ethnics and/or classes.

In other places, long civil wars eventually installed Communist regimes in multiethnic countries and ethnic conflict subsided or stopped. Short of installing a Communist regime, multiethnic countries moving towards socialism are likely to experience a lot of internal violence and chaos.

If diversity is so bad for socialism, why do socialists in the West keep pushing it?

Good question.

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Problems of Leftwing Democracy

In the comments section, astute commenter huy remarks on the conundrum of socialist democracy when capitalists retain control over the media and culture::

The only problem is that a socialist revolution would probably require a dictatorship and repression.

This is because without dictatorship and repression, rich capitalists would be able to prevent significant social services and state planning in a democracy via their control of the media and peoples' thoughts.

I'm not for socialism as a long term thing, but only as a way to quickly develop a country's infrastructure and economy, before gradual privatization of suitable sectors.

I respond:

huy, you are correct as far as your first two sentences go. I will deal with the third sentence at the end.

This conundrum is why Communists opted for the dictatorship of the proletariat, not because they are lovers of repression and haters of freedom.

The rich capitalists, through their media control and also their cultural construction and fertilization creating Gramscian cultural hegemonies (what you referred to as "control over people's thoughts"), are typically able to prevent social services and state planning in a democracy.

This is why Communists say that you never really have a democracy in capitalism. You always have a dictatorship of capital. Be that as it may, most folks nowadays do not seem to want to live under a dictatorship of the proletariat. Nevertheless, the roadblocks in the way of socialist democracy present a a serious problem.

Not only are the capitalists able to thwart significant progressive change via media and cultural control, but the same capitalists, via control over the economy, are able to stage lockouts and capital strikes, to send their capital out of the country, to artificially create shortages, and to send wealthy housewives out into the streets beating pots and pans in a middle and upper class strike, etc.

These housewife pot-banging strikes occurred in Chile under Allende, Venezuela under Chavez, and just recently occurred again in Argentina when President Kirchner tried to tax booming agricultural exports.

The big ag producers in Argentina responded by trying to starve the cities by staging ag strikes and refusing to ship produce to the cities so the people would have nothing to eat.

What is ominous about this is that these same rich housewife pot-banging demos and a latifundista (large landowner elite) strike presaged the coup that brought the death squads into power in Argentina in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

The generals stayed in power for several years, during which they murdered 30,000 leftwing Argentines, the vast majority of whom were just idealistic young people working with the poor and had not taken up arms at all.

The capitalists will usually try to stage a coup through their control over the military too. That is why Hugo Chavez is correct in cleansing the corrupt bosses' oil workers' union, in cleansing the officer corps of the military of reactionary elements, and putting in some state media.

The corrupt state oil workers union was a white collar union of well to do managers who had been operating the state oil company as a personal ATM for decades. They were behind the owners' lockout strike that followed the coup, and after Chavez fired those who had been behind the lockout and sabotage, they destroyed much of the records and paperwork of the oil company before they left. Clearly they had to go.

In the previous coup attempt, the middle and upper-class officer corps supported the coup, but the enlisted men, who came from the poor, did not. The poor rank and file military refused their officers' orders and the officers backed down. Hence, cleansing the officer corps of coup supporters was a must.

Getting a foot in the door of the Right's media monopoly was also important. Previously, the rich had all of the papers, magazines and especially TV stations and they used these to wage continuous lying propaganda war against Chavez.

Furthermore, the entire rightwing media not only supported the coup attempt against Chavez but were actively complicit in it. For that treason, Chavez is perfectly within his rights to shut down the entire rightwing media. He only does not do this because of the international outcry it would arouse.

The Right did the same thing with their media control during the Allende regime in Chile, printing wild lies about Cuban armies offshore and hiding in Chilean bases ready to invade Chile and impose Communism at gunpoint.

Middle class and upper class capital strikes can be devastating to the economy, and most folks, no matter how revolutionary, just get tired of the economic pain after a while and vote to put the reactionaries back in power.

Sanctions work the same way. The US and UK and sometimes France and Canada (when those two latter states are in an imperialist mood) usually slap sanctions on democratic Left states as soon as possible.

Recent examples are Nicaragua, Haiti and Zimbabwe (at first democratic, now increasingly dictatorial), and this alone is enough to devastate the economy and cause the people to vote out the Left and put reactionaries back in power.

What happens is that in an effort to get some control of the country back and fight back against all of this US plots, the Left regime often starts becoming more authoritarian and less democratic. Then the US says it's a dictatorship and needs to be overthrown on that basis.

If that doesn't work, the US forms a reactionary contra counterrevolutionary army that goes around killing any civilian that is pro-Left, murdering teachers and health care workers, burning down schools, ag cooperatives and health care facilities and just making the place ungovernable. In order to fend off contras and coups, Chavez has built up his military and even armed the population.

One more thing the US does is to flood money into the democratic Left country to buy the election of the reactionaries via all sorts of fake civil society groups. A good way to stop this is to ban all money coming to political groups from outside the country, but that is easier said than done. The money seems to find its way in anyway.

The US and its reactionary allies also stage bombings, shootings, riots, etc, against democratic Left states, and then often blames them on the Left. This is what they did in Chavez' Venezuela, Aristide's Haiti and Mossadegh's Iran.

If worse comes to worse and none of the above works, the Left regime is overthrown by a coup and replacement by a reactionary dictatorship. This dictatorship typically then institutes a reign of terror in which anywhere from 100's to 1 million progressives are killed all over the land. This is what happened in Indonesia in 1965, when 1 million Leftists were killed in a CIA coup.

What is even creepier is that while the Left is in power, the CIA is usually running around the country making up lists of leftwingers. As soon as the coup comes, the CIA hands over the lists to the death squad Right now in power, and they use these lists to hunt down progressives and murder them.

So if a Left regime is in power, there is always the terror of a future coup followed by a murder spree against anyone politically active in the regime. This is enough to make people afraid to get politically active.

The reign of terror itself so so terrorizes the population that most people are afraid to get involved in progressive politics for years or even decades afterwards. Why get involved? Who is to say when the death squads will come back in power and try to kill you for being politically active in Left politics.

All of this makes socialist democracy or even social democracy in backwards states almost impossible to achieve.

On the other hand, lots of leftwingers are trying to figure out a way to have some sort of socialist or even Marxist democracy, despite all the challenges. The Sandinistas had a democratic socialist revolution and Hugo Chavez is having one too. The Nepalese Maoists support 100% democracy. There's new thinking with a lot of Communists nowadays that socialism is not really possible without total democracy.

When I look at Cuba and I think about a few dissidents getting thrown in prison, is that really worse than masses of people dying early from preventable death or not having enough food to eat, or living in shantytown hovels, or prostituting themselves, or homeless kids sniffing glue, turning into criminals and getting killed by cops as happens all over Latin America?

Third World capitalist nightmare states punish an awful lot of innocent people too. Doesn't Cuba punish a lot fewer innocent people by clapping a few dissidents in prison than are harmed in these failing 3rd world capitalist states?

In India, capitalism is killing 4 million people a year. That's a five-alarm fire right there. If we had a socialist revolution there even with a dictatorship and saved 4 million lives a year, would it be worth it for a few folks slapped in prison?

I do think that the new way of Chavez, the Sandinistas, the FMLN of El Salvador and the Nepalese Maoists is the better way to go. Nothing wrong with democracy. If the people reject socialism at the polls and go back to capitalism and lots of them go hungry, go homeless, drink sewage water, get sick, get crippled and start dying, I guess we can say that they made a choice to have that happen to themselves.

Most socialist countries did go socialist for a while (usually decades) to develop the economy and then go towards capitalism after they were pretty well developed.

People have no idea how much of China's economic growth is based on the foundations laid by decades of Maoism. At any rate, most do not realize China is still a very socialist country in many ways.

The Communists in Russia built that place up from nothing. Without the USSR, Russia would probably be like India or Afghanistan. The Vietnamese and Laotian Communists are also putting in a lot of capitalism, and North Korea now has joint partnerships for foreign investors. I support Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela in their experiments at mixed economy. I also really like social market of Belarus.

Really what we ought to look at is does the system give us the outcomes that we want? If it does, it doesn't matter what mixtures of socialist, collective and private ownership it has.

There are also all sorts of ways of enterprise ownership.

We can have nonprofits, labor collectives, families, single owners, neighborhoods, towns, cities, states and nations. All of these forms of ownership are operating all over the world as you read this.

The cooperative sector in particular is a great way to go, and most do not realize it is a non-capitalist economic system. Worker-owned firms compete with each other, and there is no exploitation of labor as in capitalism.

One of the best examples of that is the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque Country. Most Cuban agriculture is now run by cooperatives. In the cooperative model, you get away from the management-labor conflict you see in capitalism.

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Response to Zionist Apologist

Always-excellent commenter James Schipper responds to Zionist Apologist from a previous post.

Pretty good stuff here. The notion that the problem with Jews is Judaism itself is similar to the arguments of Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir. However, Kevin MacDonald points out that Jewish ethnocentrism does not go away in the absence of Judaism. A good document that makes that clear is his book review of Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century.

I disagree with a lot in that review, but all you have to do is look around at a lot of Jewish radicals, and it's clear that they have not yet, and never will, make a complete break with their Jewish identity. So pulling the Judaism out of the Jew does not solve the problem. As my physician noted when I told him that according to Jewish law, you never quit being a Jew, "So they get a piece of you, eh?"

In an unpublished interview with me, I asked Kevin MacDonald if the Jews would ever become less ethnocentric with time. He said emphatically, "No. The Jews will always be ethnocentric.."

Incidentally, I found MacDonald to be a warm, friendly, sane, intelligent and gracious man. I also did not think he was the slightest bit anti-Semitic, but maybe I am mistaken. He seemed to be a Judeophile in a sense; he was totally fascinated with Jews.

Jewish dual loyalty has been a problem everywhere there are Jews and is a direct consequence of their extreme ethnocentrism and nothing else, although James' suggests that Judaism also plays a role.

James' comments:

Giving Uganda to the Zionists would have been just as unjust as giving Palestine to them. Uganda wasn't empty territory either. As to Argentina, it was a sovereign country and at the time of Herzl it had just learned to develop the pampas. Why on earth would they give some of their pampas to outsiders from Europe?

The best territory to cede to the Zionists would have been Western Australia. At the time it was sparsely populated -- it still is -- and unlike Palestine, it could easily have accommodated all the Jews of the world. Granted, Western Australia is mainly arid or semi-arid, but so is Palestine, with the difference that WA is huge. Unfortunately, the stinking British imperialists preferred to be generous with Arab land.

A diaspora is simply the result of emigration. Since 1880, there has been an Italian diaspora. Are these diaspora Italians sick? No, and their diaspora will soon disappear through assimilation because Italians do not have a tribal religion which tells them that Italians are God's chosen people and that Italy is their sacred homeland, to which they should one day return.

The problem of Jews can be summed up in one word: Judaism. It is because of their religion that Jews can't be fully assimilated and will always remain a foreign or semi-foreign body in Gentile societies. Judaism tells Jews that they are a people, not a religious community. Nobody refers to Lutherans. Orthodox, Sikhs, Mormons as a people because those religions are non-tribal.

Consider the difference between Presbyterians and Jews. Most Presbyterians in the world have at least some Scottish ancestry, but Presbyterianism is not at all about Scots or Scotland. Nearly all Sikhs are Punjabis or descend from Punjabis, but the Sikh religion is not in the least about Punjabis. By contrast, Judaism is all about Jews and their promised land.

If people sincerely believe in Judaism, one can have some sympathy for them, in the way that one can sympathize with a Jehovah's Witness who sincerely believes that a blood transfusion is against God's will.

It is much harder to have sympathy for atheists who remain proudly Jewish and become Zionists. To stop believing in Judaism while continuing to believe that Jews are a people and that Israel is their sacred soil is like stopping to believe in Catholicism but continue to obey the Pope.

In one way, Israel made life more difficult for Jews in Gentile countries because the existence of Israel makes Jews vulnerable to the charge of dual loyalty. This charge is more than a figment of anti-Semitic imagination.

References

MacDonald, Kevin. 2005. Stalin's Willing Executioners: Jews as a Hostile Elite in the USSR - Review of Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century. The Occidental Quarterly: 5(3), 65-100.

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Imad Mughniyeh is Dead

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated February 19, 2008. This post has just been accused, as usual, of racism, in this case anti-Semitism. See here for my position statement on racism and anti-Semitism.

One of the only known photos of the super-elusive and ultra-mysterious Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah mastermind. He was so slippery he was dubbed Hezbollah's Carlos, after the famous terrorist Carlos from the 1970's. This is a great picture of him, suspicious, haunted, looking over his shoulder, as a man on the run should. And he was a man on the run for most of his life.


A more recent photo of Mughniyeh in military fatigues, against a camouflage background, issued by Iran after his death. Between the earlier photo and the later, it looks like he hasn't missed a meal. Some are also saying that the two plastic surgery operations did not alter his appearance much, but I am not at capable of judging that.

I can't stress the importance of this news.

Imad Mughniyeh, Supreme Commander of Hezbollah for the past 25 years, has been killed in a car bomb in Damascus last night, February 12, at 10:45 PM. He was on the CIA's Most Wanted List with a $25 million bounty on his head.

He was the only person killed when a silver Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle (apparently Mughniyeh's car) exploded in the upscale Kafar Soussa District in the vicinity of a Iranian school that teaches religion to Iranian pupils. Several other cars were damaged and windows of surrounding buildings were blown out. Residents gathered in their pajamas to look at the scene. A single body lay in the street, covered by a white sheet.

Kafar Soussa has many apartment buildings constructed in recent years, along with a large shopping center and the main offices of the formidable Syrian Intelligence Services.

Mughniyeh was wanted for a number of attacks during the US invasion of Lebanon in 1982, said to be to keep the peace, but actually ending up as usual, supporting the Israelis. Mughniyeh orchestrated the bombing of the US Marine Barracks and French Headquarters in Beirut in 1982 that killed 227 Marines and 58 French troops.

He also supervised the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983 that killed 63 and wiped out the entire top tier of US CIA Middle East agents. He also pulled off the bombing of the Israeli command center in Tyre that killed scores of Israeli troops. He was involved in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the execution of US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in 1985.

He was involved in the kidnappings of many Americans in Beirut during the 1980's, including Terry Anderson and CIA officer and US Army Colonel William Buckley, who Hezbollah executed. In 1988, the top US CIA agent in Lebanon, Colonel William Higgins, was kidnapped by Hezbollah and tortured to death.

He was also involved in the truck bomb attack on the US military residence facilities at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, targeting US servicemen who were guarding Saudi oil fields. 19 Americans were killed in that blast and 200 more were wounded.

There are suggestions that he was involved along with Hezbollah and/or Iran in the dual bombings in Buenos Aires, one at the Israeli Embassy 1992 that killed 29 people, and another at the Jewish Cultural Center in 1994 that killed 95 people. Three Israeli soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad were captured along the Lebanon border in 1999, taken POW, and possibly later executed.

The border incident that set off the 2006 Lebanon War led to the capture of two more Israeli POW's, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. Mughniyeh was believed to be behind both of these abductions of Israeli soldiers.

Debka has long claimed that Mughniyeh was on very close terms with both bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Iranian leadership. This seems bizarre. Al Qaeda's project is nothing less than Hitlerian extermination of every Shia Muslim on Earth.

Mughniyeh has been described as Hezbollah's Head of External Operations and it is believed that he stays in contact with cells that Hezbollah has all over the world. He is also described as a senior Hezbollah intelligence official, head of the group's security wing and the founder of the group. In the event of a US or Israeli attack on Iran, Mughniyeh would have been relied upon to be in charge of any response.

Angry Arab feels that Mughniyeh's role and feat were largely exaggerated, but I am not so sure about that; he also feels that Robert Fisk could not possibly have interviewed the actual Imad Mughniyeh in Lebanon in 1991, but I think he did.

The interview is worth reading: Fisk in yet another superb, incisive piece. When it comes to Middle East, few are better than Robert Fisk. I guess that is why International Zionism is on a crusade to crucify him.

Mughniyeh was Lebanese, born in Tyre in South Lebanon, not Palestinian as many people are saying. He joined Arafat's Force 17 elite bodyguard unit in Lebanon at a young age. He joined Amal, and then went to Iran for training, where he excelled. He then conducted daring behind enemy lines operations in the Iran-Iraq War.

Most of the operations in Lebanon that he is most famous for were actually conducted by a group called Islamic Jihad. This group later was folded into Hezbollah, which was not formed at any rate until 1988 anyway. Mughniyeh personally executed Stethem during the hijacking in 1985. In 1990, he had plastic surgery done in Iran to change his facial features.

Then he went back to Beirut, where he lived underground using a variety of fake passports. At some point, his cover got blown and he returned to Iran again for a second plastic surgery operation that completely changed his appearance. He was said to have been in Basra in early 2006 helping Mahdi Army fighters go to Iran for military training.

He then returned to Lebanon, where he took part in the Lebanon War. Lately, he was still living in Beirut, but traveling to the Damascus neighborhood where he was killed for meetings on a regular basis.

A top Israeli military official said, "He's the brains behind Hezbollah's military wing." Hezbollah's casualties in the 2006 War are not known. Israel claims that 1/3 of its fighters were killed, but that seems excessive. It seems clear that Hezbollah has now completely restocked its missile supplies and has tripled them from 15,000 in the 2006 War to 45,000 now. Further, it now has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv.

In recent days, Hezbollah teams disguised as reporters were said to be photographing the area on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Mughniyeh definitely committed some acts of terrorism - notably the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires - but most of his so-called crimes were simply acts of war, legitimate acts of war I might add.

Guerrilla armies lack spy satellites, $500 billion/year defense budgets, smart bombs, cruise missiles, F-16's and all of the other expensive military hardware that enables advanced states to carry out precision states during war. Guerrilla groups have to make do with what they have. I do consider embassies, especially those swarming with espionage agents, to be legitimate targets for guerrillas in wartime.

Surely spies may be executed, but I don't think enemy troops should be. None of the attacks on US, French or Israeli bases in Lebanon were terrorist attacks. The killings of the three Israelis and the US servicemen were war crimes, but the US and Israel have certainly executed plenty of POW's and the Israelis continue to do so. The attack that set off the Lebanon War was hardly an act of terrorism.

Hence, Mughniyeh's mantle as the king of terrorism is largely nonsense. Most of his acts were simply very well planned and executed attacks on the enemy in wartime, and within what I consider to be the rules of war.

Mughniyeh was one of the most underground people on Earth and no one seemed to know where he was most of the time, and Hezbollah was not talking. He was probably one of the world's most highly protected and most secretive guerrilla fighters. Whoever killed him by penetrating his multiple circles of Syrian and Iranian intelligence officers and bodyguards surely pulled off a coup de etat.

All fingers are pointing to the Israeli Mossad, which is expert at these kind of attacks. However, the Israeli government is denying any role in killing Mughniyeh, for what it is worth. Would not Israel either admit it or refuse to comment? I originally felt that Israel did not carry out this attack, but on second thought, there does seem to be evidence pointing to their involvement.

For one thing, the MO of the operation matches closely the MO of the Mossad assassination of top Hamas operative Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil. In fact, a book written as fiction by a former Mossad agent, though set in the Shia suburbs of South Beirut, appears to describe the MO used in the killing of Mughniyeh closely.

If the book had been translated into Arabic and Mughniyeh had read it, perhaps he could have avoided this. Khalil was a founding member of Hamas and a senior member of the Hamas military wing. Actually, there are probably two Hamases. One is the Hamas that runs the Gaza government. The other Hamas is based out of Syria and could be called Hamas-Khaled Meshal.

This could be seen as an arm of Hamas run out of Syria, and probably a more militant one at that. Sheikh Khalil was close to Meshal. However, note that Israel "neither confirmed nor denied" that killing of Khalil. Has there ever been a case of an Israeli assassination that they did not take credit for, indeed that they even said explicitly that they did not do?

Also note that retired CIA officers are saying that Israel did it. Other theories suggest that either supporters of the pro-government faction in Lebanon, at odds with Hezbollah and Syria, or Iran themselves, killed Mughniyeh.

The Syria and Iran theories hinge on those countries giving up Mughniyeh to the US or Israel in order to get the heat off of them and deliver a wanted militant that had a $5 million US price tag on his head in return for an unspecified US quid pro quo.

This theory is called into question because Bush placed new sanctions on Syria the day after the bombing. If this was a quid pro quo to get the US to back off Syria, that would not have happened. Mughniyeh was also wanted by some of the Lebanese Christian factions and the Saudi, Lebanese, Jordanian, Iraqi and Kuwaiti governments.

Adding weight to the theory that Israel did it are reports from Palestinians in Fatah who have regular contact with Israeli intelligence. The Fatah sources indicate that Israeli intel is saying that they have settled their account with Mughniyeh. Further analysis of Israel's denial shows that it may not even be a denial at all - Israel rejects terrorist groups blaming Israel for the killing, but does not deny that Israel committed the act.

If Israel indeed killed Mughniyeh, which seems likely, that looks very bad for Syria. It means that Mossad has been able to penetrate into the heart of Hezbollah, and it means that the Mossad can operate apparently with impunity deep in the most secure parts of Damascus. Their next target is surely Nasrallah himself. It also implies that Israel has penetrated Syrian intelligence itself, a tough nut to crack.

Hezbollah will now probably undergo purges looking for the Israeli agents in Hezbollah. People will be arrested and executed.

Mughniyeh is said to have replaced Hassan Nasrallah as head of the Hezbollah after the 2006 war and he was rumored to have enemies in Lebanon, maybe even inside Hezbollah. Hezbollah TV is reporting his death and blaming Israel.

Nasrallah will speak at his funeral in Beirut, which will be very heavily guarded. This does not look good for Damascus. They were supposed to protect this guy, who is after all one of their main assets, but they failed.

His death is huge news in the roiling stew pot called the Middle East, and there will surely be counter-responses by Hezbollah, probably against Israel. Nasrallah is already thundering threats in the direction of Israel. The wild conspiracy stories are already spreading like vines. This is the Middle East, where intrigues are as normal as sand and hummus and anything that can happen, probably does happen.

We have not see the end of this.