Lalaking May Nakabaong Pala Sa Ulo

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Spanish translation (en Español).

This is the Tagalog translation of the Man Has a Shovel in His Head post.

Dito sa kakaibang videong ito, isang lalaking may edad 21, at ang kanyang kapartrner sa krimen, ay nagnanakaw sa Manaus, Brazil. Hindi ko lang sigurado kung sila ay nagnanakaw lang sa bahay-bahay o pumapatay pa ng nakatira sa kanilang pinagnakawan.

Minsan sinira nila ang mga bahay at ang mga taong nakasaksi ay hinabol sila at inatake at lumaban. Ang lalaki sa video ay nabaril ng 7 beses pero nakatakbo pa ng buhay no u. Bukod dito nahagip pa siya ng isang pala na sa tindi ng pagkakapalo ay bumaon sa ulo niya! Sa video, nagpapagulong- gulong siya sa lupa, duguan na nakabaon ang pala ssa ulo niya. Di kapanipaniwala!

Pero sa videong ito, ang lalaking ito ay hindi inosente di katulad ng ibang video.

Robber Badly Hacked Up With a Machete in Brazil

This video is terrible! But the guy who got hurt here is definitely a bad person.

The incident occurred in Brazilia, the capital of Brazil, at some unknown time recently. The hacked up man in the video is a criminal who he robbed a house and in the process, hit and kicked a 6 month pregnant woman in the stomach. The husband was home at the time and confronted and attacked the man with a machete the husband happened to have lying around.

In the video, the injured man is at the hospital, and doctors are trying to talk to him. He is screaming that he feels cold. This is hypothermia, a body reaction to blood loss.

The man has a serious hack to his forehead and his right arm is badly hacked. His left arm has been hacked clear off halfway up the forearm. The video continues for a bit, showing the hacked up criminal in the hospital, screaming like a banshee.

Very disturbing!

Un Hombre con una Pala Clavada en la Cabeza

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This is the Spanish translation of the Man With a Shovel Stuck in His Head post. Tagalog translation (isinalin sa Tagalog).

En este extraño vídeo, un hombre de 21 años y su cómplice criminal estaban "robando en casas" en Manaus, Brasil. No estoy seguro de si eso significa que estaban robando cosas en las casas o cometían atracos a mano armada.

De todos modos, asaltaron muchas casa y, llegados a un punto, un grupo numeroso de residentes furiosos los persiguieron y empezaron a atacarles. Al hombre del vídeo le dispararon siete veces, pero aun así consiguió sobrevivir. Para colmo, le dieron con una pala justo en la cabeza. ¡Le golpearon tan fuerte con la pala que se quedó encallada en su cabeza! ¡En este vídeo se revuelca por el suelo durante un minuto con una pala clavada en la cabeza! Increíble.

Pero este chico no es exactamente una víctima inocente, como en muchos de los otros vídeos.

Man With a Shovel Stuck in His Head

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German, Polish and Bulgarian. Email me if you are interested.

Spanish translation (en Español). Tagalog translation (isinalin sa Tagalog).

In this very strange video, a 21 year old man and his criminal partner were "robbing homes" in Manaus, Brazil. I'm not sure whether that means they were burglarizing homes or committing armed robberies.

Anyway, they ripped off several homes and at some point, a posse of angry residents took off after them and started to attack them. The man in the video was shot 7 times but still managed to survive. To top it off, he received a shovel right in the head. He was hit so hard with the shovel that it stuck in his head! He is rolling around on the ground for about one minute in this video with a shovel stuck in his head! Unbelievable.

But this guy is not exactly an innocent victim like in so many of the other videos.

Bum Eats Rats

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This video is pretty ridiculous! A bum is enticed into eating either rats or mice, it's hard to tell which. They are pretty small though, so to me, they look like mice. I'm also not sure if they are alive or not. The rodents are on the ground in a run-down area. He reaches down, picks up a rodent, puts it into his mouth, and eats it whole! Then he takes a swig of liquid, possibly water, out of a plastic container.

They are speaking a foreign language in this video. It's apparently South American Spanish.

Brazilian Man With Shoulder Infected from Shooting Synthol

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This video is seriously sick. It shows a young Brazilian man who got an infection his shoulder from injecting Synthol, which is used to increase muscle size. The disgusting material pouring out of his shoulder is simply pus from the infection. This happens quite often when men inject steroids or Synthol under unclean circumstances.

Updates From the "Defeated" FARC

In the 3-month period encompassing August, September and October, 107 FARC guerrilla attacks took place. That is over one attack per day. During that period, the Colombian military suffered 131 killed and 358 wounded, for a total of 489 casualties. The military suffered over 1 killed and 4 wounded per day, or almost 6 casualties a day. Pretty good for a guerrilla army on the verge of defeat.

489 casualties, and not one word on any of it from the US corporate media. No wonder Americans think the guerrilla is near defeat.

20 businesses were attacked in various cities and towns,including Bogotá, for refusal to pay revolutionary taxes. 2 helicopters were shot down and 6 more were hit by guerrilla fire.

Apparently these figures are for the Eastern Bloc of the guerrilla alone, but a Spanish speaker may want to look that over, because my Spanish is not that great.

Make no mistake about it, the FARC is undergoing some hard times. But only six years ago, they were said to be on the verge of taking over the country. This army has been around for 43 years and they have been on the verge of defeat for real many times. They recovered every time. It is probably not possible to defeat the FARC militarily.

Red Resistencia is an interesting FARC website, with very regular and well-done communiques from the "defeated" guerrillas. ANNCOL, the New Colombian News Agency, is frankly nothing more than the news agency of the FARC, but it is very well done, with many new stories filed every day. I can't understand how a defeated guerrilla army does such a great job of keeping up these websites.

ANNCOL-Brasil (in Portuguese) is the support network of the "defeated guerrillas" in Brazil, where they have long had a large support base, especially with members of the PT ruling party (though probably not the Lulaistas - the supporters of the moderating Presidency of Lula).

The website of the Colombian Communist Party, and its famous newspaper, Voz. FARC has always been nothing more than the armed wing of this party. The PCC site is also very well-done. The nicely-done website of the "defeated" FARC Eastern Bloc.

The FARC is deeply allied with both the Cuban regime and with Chavez' government in Venezuela (Yes, the propaganda is true.). As far as how deep that alliance goes, I have no idea. Apporea is a leftwing, pro-Chavez site out of Venezuela.

The FARC is also allied with the FSLN Sandinista party (and presumably the Sandinista government) of Nicaragua (Yes, this is true too.). The website of Chavez' Telesur TV out of Venezuela, designed to provide a progressive alternative to the rightwing Latin American media. Mundial is a leftwing radio station out of Venezuela, also run by the Venezuelan government - this is their website, with lots of text on it.

All of the above is in Spanish only.

Is Semco Socialism?

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:

Is this socialism?

A Brazilian company, Semco, has adopted an anarcho-syndicalist style of organization and has been growing for decades. Workers hire and fire management and agree on management's salaries. Workers set their own salaries and hours. 25% of profits go back to workers. Workers hire and fire their own. There are no job titles. Every worker gets to see the company's books.

It's supposed to be anarcho-syndicalist style of management, but I'm not even sure what anarcho-syndicalism is, even after reading this article.

Even if it's not socialism, it sounds like it's a heck of a lot better than what we have.

From Monday Memo, a management website. Hat tip Entitled To An Opinion. TGGP, at ETAO, asks if this works so great, why don't profit-maximizing corporations adopt it.

In the comments, Kevin Carson says the corporations are not really profit-maximizing, they are out for short-term profits and care nothing about the long term health of the company. The company may as well be sold off to some junk bond guy who strips the assets, fires everyone and pockets the cash. Or it's going to get bought out by someone else down the road.

You have to wonder if capitalism is such a wonder machine, why do capitalists wreck their own companies for short-term profits and Wall Street gains while ruining the long-term profits of the enterprise?

Why do they seem to care nothing about the long term interests of the company such that they would just as soon sell it to someone else to do God knows what with, or auction it off in an LBO to some junk-bond guy who specializes in cannibalizing companies and leaving piles of bones? What's so great about this "magic hand of the market" crap anyway? It's good for making money. So? So's slinging crack on the corner.

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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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Demographics Augurs Well For US Socialism

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 August 23:

In the comments section, first psychologist Mort Goldman from The Family Guy, our only celebrity commenter, notes that Scandinavian socialism can never happen in the US because US Whites will oppose being taxed to pay for non-Whites. That's pretty much been the history of the US for the last 28 years or so.

But I argue that as Whites decline, and as they become a minority, we can move more towards a Scandinavian model.

Uncle Milton, another commenter, says:

"I think that when Whites get to be a minority, we can have more of a Scandinavian-style socialist society."

Why do you believe the US would have a Scandinavian style socialist society when Whites become a minority in the US..? Why wouldn't it be more like Brazil or Mexico..?

Here is my response to this very interesting question posed by Unc:

Good question Milton.

Minorities here in the US are pretty politically savvy and leftwing. Our society is already much more socialist than Brazil or Mexico and our ruling class is not as White as theirs is, nor is it as horrible, venal and ruthless. Brazil has death squads that roam around the land murdering uppity peasants. Any politician who goes after them is going to feel their wrath, possibly with bullets.

Also, the press down there is quite a bit more reactionary even than the US press. Under the Republicans in the last 14 years, US Whites have been trying to move towards a Mexico-Brazil type capitalism, but it hasn't been all that successful. These efforts have culminated under Bush, who has also started to actually steal elections, harass dissidents and move towards authoritarian rule, in line with the US Banana Republic model.

Those ruling classes down there in Mexico and Brazil will not budge an inch. The rest of the people, though they are getting royally screwed, are not politically savvy like the Venezuelans, Haitians or Bolivians. In other words, the system is already incredibly more rightwing down there than it is up here. It's hard to make changes in those hardcore reactionary societies without taking up guns or getting lucky like Chavez or Morales.

Since our society is already pretty socialist and the only people feverishly working to make it less so are a rapidly declining, desperate and increasingly unsuccessful White demographic, the future augurs well for socialism in the US. Blacks and Hispanics in the US are much more sophisticated politically than Mexicans and Brazilians, and it's much easier to add more socialism to an already quite-socialist society.

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Manuel Marulanda (Sure Shot), Presente!

One of my all-time heroes, and one of the Great Men of the Latin American revolution, is dead.

RIP Pedro Antonio Marin (Tiro Fijo).

New leader? Alfonso Cano, an anthropologist and the group's chief ideologist. There were many anthropologists among Sendero Luminoso's top ideologists too, as I pointed out in a previous post. Nothing like field work among the oppressed to turn one into a raving revolutionary.

And yes, I do support the FARC, of course. Unequivocally and 100%, and so should all of you.

This movement is grotesquely misunderstood. If it existed in any kind of real democracy instead of in a terrorist death squad state, they never would have had to fire a shot, or at least would have laid down their weapons long ago. As is, they'd be insane to give up the gun. For the time being in Colombia, there is no other way.

In the 1980's, a section of the FARC disarmed and formed a legal political party called the Patriotic Union. Despite unbelievable repression, they managed to gain a respectable showing in some elections.

They were slaughtered like flies by the Colombian state with US military and intelligence assistance until 5,000 UP activists lay dead. The movement disbanded and scattered and has not been heard from since. The FARC is not insane. They already tried to lay down their guns. Look at what happened. At this point, the FARC is not going to lay down their guns until they get a say in running the country.

There is hardly anyone on the Left running for any office anywhere in Colombia. Anyone who does can be and may well be targeted for death by US-Colombian military intelligence terror machine.

Any Left organizations, including environmental groups, labor unions, peasant organizations, Indian movements, neighborhood and citizens' groups or peace communities who have declared themselves neutral, can be and may well be routinely targeted with death by the US and Colombia.

If I were a Colombian, I would either not write this blog, or, if I did, I would arm myself and join the FARC. After a while, it doesn't make sense anymore to wait for the government to come out and kill you. If the US-Colombian military-intel death machine is going to come out and try to kill me anyway, I may as well be armed so I can fight back.

As you can see in the case of the Wayuu Indians, they got tired of the US-Colombian military coming out to kill them, so large numbers of them joined the FARC, and many others formed their own guerrilla organizations. Attacks on the group dropped way down after they took up arms to defend themselves.

Often, the US-Colombian military death squads will start to raid villages and stage killings and massacres of villagers. At some point, at least lately, a FARC unit will intervene and drive the attackers away, saving many lives. You can see that the FARC is the only thing keeping the US-Colombian military from staging vast massacres across the land.

It is said that the FARC adds to the violence in Colombia. Far be it. The FARC had an autonomous zone carved out for it a few years back. The main city in this jungle, a town of only 25,000, had an incredible homicide rate of 1 killing/day. After the FARC came in, that was reduced to 1 killing/year. Some murderous guerrillas!

The FARC has been an armed self-defense group from its origins in the peasant community of Marquetalia in 1964. The leftwing peasants of Marquetalia, tired of the mad violence that was sweeping the land in La Violencia, essentially seceded from the war and made their own private Idaho on some land they owned in Western Colombia.

It's true that they were Communists, but there were only a few hundred of them, and they were nonviolent. The US and Colombian governments became alarmed at these live Communists existing openly on Colombia's land, and plans were made to exterminate them. The US Ambassador and US military cooperated closely in these plans. The US recommended everything be thrown at the peasants, including chemical weapons.

The US-Colombian army (with US advisors on board) finally attacked the area, but the peasants of Marquetalia were not all killed. Some survived and armed themselves to fight back. This was the beginnings of the FARC, and this has been the story ever since.

There was a march a while back against the US-Colombian death squads that haunt the land. A huge number of persons showed up in cities all across Colombia. Very quickly afterwards, with only a couple of weeks, the US-Colombian military killed about a dozen marchers and leaders. Just like that. This is what happens to the unarmed opposition in Colombia.

If the FARC falls apart, nothing will change. Colombia will be as big of a shithole as ever, but now there will be no way for the people to fight back against the US-Colombian state and its killers.

I read this article in English a while back, but now it's disappeared into some memory hole somewhere. Here it is in Spanish if you can read Spanish. Upshot of the piece is that the FARC does not depend on dope. They tax all crops in the areas they control, which is normally about 40% of the country.

This includes drug crops like coca. People grow coca because the state has not provided them the wherewithal to make a decent living growing anything else, despite the fake US-Colombian crop substitution program of recent years. During Plan Colombia in Putumayo Province, much of the land was devastated with herbicide, including perfectly legal crops, and most of the residents became ill with chemical poisoning.

US-Colombian death squads quickly appeared in the area and started murdering peasants right and left. This was around 2002. After a couple years of that, about 8,000 Indians in Putumayo had signed up with the FARC.

This is why people join the FARC, my doubting readers. Not because they feel like turning terrorist and destroying some glorious democracy because they are evildoers, but because the army keeps coming out to try kill them and spray poison all over them and their crops.

This article (dead link) lays out what Colombia is really like. It portrays a rural region in Colombia. The US-Colombian state does not touch the coca plantations of the rich in this region. Here, the rich own all the land, and the poor live in wretched misery.

It was not always this way. There used to be vast numbers of small landowners scattered through this whole region. They're mostly gone now, part of a project by the US-Colombian military to steal the people's land for the rich and kill anyone who resisted.

Most of this area has gone over to vast cattle ranches in the hands of a few ultra-rich landowners. These landowners hire death squads to keep this sick state of affairs as it is. This is why the FARC is always kidnapping these wealthy landowner "innocent civilians". They are not so innocent! These are the people who run the death squads.

There are still peasant farmers in this region, but they are now crammed into miserable and tiny plots that are a shadow of the ones they farmed. It's barely enough to feed oneself. The many peasants who were run off the land altogether now live crammed in teeming urban slums that never existed before.

If you drive through the area, there seems to be open land everywhere - for cows. You see a few miserable peasants with tiny plots, and then you see vast and teeming slums. On the highway is a death squad and US-Colombian military checkpoint to keep the peons from rising up about this fucked-up bullshit. To accomplish the sickening state of affairs in this blighted region, the US-Colombian military killed 100's to 1000's of people.

Now let us go to a large city - Medellin. The FARC militias were all run out a few years back, and the death squads run the show now. The poor are crammed into horrid slums on hillsides with no paved roads, no water, no sewage, no electricity, no nothing. The shit runs down the gutters, people gather rain for water, and when it rains, the hills slide down on the makeshift shanties.

Down below, watching the Dickensian slums above with cold eyes, are the death squads. If any slum dweller raises a peep about their miserable situation, they may just get a bullet. The death squads are put there by the US and Colombia to make sure that that disgusting state of affairs stays just the way it is.

Westerners have the temerity to ask why there is a revolution in Colombia.

How could there not be one?

The FARC has definitely been hit hard lately in a lot of ways. The Colombian military has doubled in size since 2000 (mostly due to an infusion of US money) and the FARC has been experiencing, since 2005, the most concerted military offensive that any Latin American revolutionary army has ever faced.

They may conceivably not make it, but if they don't, the violence will not end. The state will continue to kill the people, and it will still be impossible for the Left to organize or run for office without getting killed. If the FARC goes, there will only be successors; there will be no justice.

Personally, dire as things are, I think that the FARC will pull through. One of the ways that they reacted to the offensive was to branch into other nations. The FARE is in Ecuador¹, the FARV, with 1000's of members, is in Venezuela², the FARP is in Peru and doing very well³, and the FARB is in the Dog's Head region of Brazil⁴. FARC is in Panama and Guyana, and they have activists in Bolivia helping Morales' party.

A previous post gives details on all of these FARC splinters.

Great blog on Colombia. Machetera is also great and so's People's Movement Support Group.

Notes

1. This report from 2000 describes how both the FARC and the ELN had a growing presence across the border in Ecuador and how the FARE had just formed to protest against Plan Colombia. On May 15, 2000, the Ecuadorian military intercepted a FARE patrol in Sucumbios Province on the Peruvian border.

Two FARE members were killed and five more were wounded or captured in the shootout. In early 2000, the FARE blew up an oil pipeline in Ecuador. On August 28, 2002, the FARE set off a leaflet bomb in a McDonald's in Guayaquil that caused serious damage to the property. As of 2000, it was still a small group in the country. Whether or not the FARE still exists in not known.


2. The FARV is nothing but the name of the FARC in its rear guard zone inside Venezuela. The FARC has such zones and forces in all of the countries bordering it.

3. The FARP is nothing but the FARC inside Peru. They have penetrated deep into Peru and has recruited many former members and supporters of Sendero Luminoso. Former commanders of the MRTA have also joined the FARC's army in Peru. For now, they are not doing much except laying down base areas, but they are very popular with rural Peruvians who got sick of Sendero's mad violence.


4. The FARB is very little known, but it probably just the name of the FARC in its rear-guard area inside Brazil (Dog's Head region) There is another FARB inside Brazil that has been threatening and even killing some PT mayors and officials. It is supposedly a far Left group of PT dissidents angry at some PT officials for selling out the people.

Others think that the group does not even exist and instead is merely a fake name for rightwing death squads that rampage all across Brazil.

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