New Sendero Attack

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.

On October 20, 30 Senderistas (members of Sendero Luminoso or the Shining Path) invaded a mining site run by the Doe Run Mining Company in Huancavelica and took dynamite, radios, food and medicine.

One of the things that sustained Sendero in its long insurgency was a ready supply of explosives. There is all sorts of dynamite to be had in Peru, a country with a huge mining industry. Most bombs made by Sendero were apparently fashioned from dynamite.

The region is famous for mercury mining. Doe Run is probably involved in copper mining in the region. Sendero has traditionally had a strong presence in this region.

The Huancavelica Region in Peru. The capital city of Huancavelica has 400,000 mostly Indian inhabitants and is one of the poorest cities in Peru.

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What Do White Nationalists Want?

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 December 7::

We clearly established here a while back that White nationalism is for the most part simply White racism or White supremacism with a nice-sounding new name to keep from scaring people off. In a fancy, innocuous-sounding package, in other words.

I think maybe less than 5% of White nationalists are actually not racists. I'm not sure what's up with them. A greater percentage are fond of Asians. Some have even married Asian women. It's hard to call folks like that White supremacists, since they usually think that NE Asians are equal to or superior to European Whites.

On more moderate sites like American Renaissance, the view that NE Asians are equal to or superior to European Whites is commonly held, such that we must note that many White nationalists are in fact not White supremacists. This is an important distinction. The Left always calls these folks White Supremacists, and in many cases, that's not fair.

I'm fascinated with White nationalism for some perverse reason, and to be honest, that's why I write about it all the time.

Reading this blog is unfortunately just a glimpse into my perverse, unhealthy and chaotic mind. I wish I was more mature than that, but I'm not. Whatever is in my mind during given periods ends up on the blog. I admit I'm obsessed with race. Hence, the blog is race-obsessed. I'm not able to separate my private mental life from this blog yet, and I may never be.

Let's look at the White nationalist program to see if this movement is racist or not.

Even on Amren, in the comments, you see a very large number of White nationalists saying that, ideally, we ought to throw all non-Whites out of the US. I don't know how many feel that way. I never heard any of them say that they morally oppose such a project. I wonder how many WN's don't think this is a good idea. Clearly such a desire is racist.

On a lesser but yet important level, the vast majority of WN's seem to take the opinion that only European Whites are real Americans. All others, no longer how long they have lived here, will never be Americans. I argue that this notion is racist in and of itself. Those opposed are invited to the comments to disagree.

A very large number of White nationalists, even on Amren, hanker for a race war, in particular a war between Whites and Blacks.

They also like to project about this a lot, claiming that Blacks want a race war with Whites. Sure, Nation of Islam Black Nationalists might, but it's not a common view. I've been around thousands of Blacks (I taught in Black schools for years) and I've never heard one Black person say this.

White nationalists hanker for this because they think they can win this war. Most Blacks don't think this is a good idea, I assume because it's obvious that they would lose. If anything is racism, hankering for race war sure as Hell is.

One thing that is clear is that almost all WN's seem to want White separatism in some form or another. I'm aware that some WN's say that they are not White separatists. Their numbers are very small. Even those who say they are not White separatists still support "the right of communities to implement separatism at a local level." Hmmm.

It seems to me that in general, White separatism would have to be driven by feelings of racism. I wouldn't say all the time, but surely most of the time. As a political project, White separatism must be seen as racist to the core, regardless of the motivations of individuals.

The final WN view is that all anti-discrimination laws should be repealed. Some say we should only do this a piece at a time, but they all seem to support it. I would be very interested to meet a White nationalist who does not support getting rid of all anti-discrimination laws.

This project is so obviously racist on its face that I have even said that non-racist folks pushing this, such as libertarians and anarchists, are de facto racists in that they are pushing a racist agenda, no matter what pretty and loving thoughts may be dancing in their empathy-drenched minds.

This has aroused a firestorm of fury on libertarian and rightwing anarchist sites, but it's always a pleasure to have the right kind of enemies.

Just to be fair, let's point out what's not racist about WN. Discussions of race realism are not necessarily racist, depending on how they are handled. Complaining about or criticizing other races is not necessarily racist either. Maybe they're just telling it like it is? Opposition to anti-White hate propaganda, so prevalent in our society, is not necessarily racist.

Feeling pride in being White is not necessarily racist either.

My opinion is that all races and ethnic groups should take pride in themselves. It's sad that more ethnic nationalists don't feel this way. In fact, if you meet people from around the world, most people do take pride in their race or ethnicity! It's healthy! Love yourself, love your tribe, love your nation, love your race.

Ideally, if WN's respected the right of other groups to take pride in themselves, WN's could look at proud Blacks and Hispanics and at least respect them for standing up for their people; instead, WN's almost always see such folks as deadly enemies.

Let's look at the White nationalist project in summary:

Project/philosophy                Racist?

Strike anti-discrimination laws   YES
Remove non-Whites from US         YES
Only Whites can be real Americans YES
Advocate race war vs. non-Whites  YES
White separatism project at core* YES

*At project level, not individual level.

I would argue that from an anti-racist point of view, WN is invalidated right there.

We don't need act silly and beat people up for talking about IQ or crime rates, feeling filial pride, or defending their people against idiots of other races. Given my argument above, why on Earth would any non-racist to anti-racist White person, however proud, sign on to WN? Forget it.

In an incredible book about Peru's Shining Path, The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru, Peruvian journalist and uber-intellectual Gustavo Gorriti wisely noted that Sendero's revolution was a "race against time."

Gorriti speaking at some sort of citizens' security committees conference in Peru on July 4, 2008.

Sendero saw Peruvian society as it was, not as it is. Sendero saw Peru as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, but it was moving away from both by the time they started their war. Their war was actually a war against time, progress and modernity itself.

Peruvian society is horrible, and armed Left revolution is more than justified, but Sendero's analysis applied better to 1960 than 1980. In the ensuing 28 years, Peru only moved further from semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism.

US White nationalism is, like Sendero, in a race against time. In the past 45 years, support among US Whites for the five core projects/philosophies listed above has apparently declined each year in the US. The decline seems to be continuing. Yet White nationalists are racing harder than ever to implement their projects, the prospects for which seem to grow dimmer by the day. How many ways can you spell "doomed"?

References

Gorriti Ellenbogen, Gustavo. Translated, with an introduction, by Robin Kirk. 1999. The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

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Sendero Raids a Town in Ayahuanco

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 October 16:

Columns of the Shining Path raided villages in the Viracochán, Ayahuanco and Santillan Districts of Huanta Province in Ayacucho Department, distributing leaflets and painting slogans on the walls. This is known as armed propaganda. They have been active in this region for a very long time.

A really nice map of Ayacucho. It's all in Spanish, but no matter. One of the best maps of this area on the Internet.

If this group would completely renounce it's evil behavior of the past, when they wantonly killed men, women and children for obscure reasons, such as being neutral, executed fair employers solely for being bosses and therefore "exploiters", and on and on, maybe they could actually get somewhere.

As it is, they were so brutal and stupid for so many years that they have enemies all over Peru. It's stupid for guerrillas to kill the people. What's the point of that? Terrorize people into supporting you? Get real.

Police said that this was the first time Sendero had been in this region this year, although they have been active in La Mar.

Huanta Province is in the far north. It's a mix of Andes and jungle. Sendero has been very active here since the beginning of the war, and they never really left. Many people left in the mid-1980's due to the war and went to Lima and they started coming back in the mid-1990's.

It's really the northern half of Ayacucho that has seen all the fighting - La Mar, Ayahuanco, Victor Fajardo, Huanta, Huamanga, Cangallo, Sucre, Huancasancos, Vilcashuaman. The war started in Cangallo Province on May 17, 1980.


A photo from President Alan Garcia's previous term, apparently taken in Ayahuanco. Those are peasants lined up against the side of the road for some creepy reason. Sendero's brutality was probably exceeded by the military, but you would never know that from reading most histories of the war.


A convent in Huanta Province, Ayacucho. Pretty typical terrain for the region. It's more forest than Andes.

Some of you may be wondering why I am writing so much about Sendero. It's not that I support them, love them, hate them, or am even obsessed with them. It's similar to why I write a lot about Jews. I ended up reading and learning a lot about Jews for several years, so now I know a lot about them and they are interesting to me.

I have been studying Sendero for around 20 years now and I have read almost every book that has ever been written on them, plus many magazine articles and pieces on the Internet. So I'm sort of an amateur Senderologist.

I will say that the Peruvian system in general is complete shit and needs to be gotten rid of - I would go so far as to say wipe it off the face of the Earth. Some sort of revolution is probably the only way to do that, but I am not sure if these Sendero crazies are the folks to do not. I've always been bothered by their cruelty and fanaticism.

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New Fighting in Peru and the Philippines

According to World War 4 Report , fighting between government troops and Shining Path guerrillas on Saturday, October 12, 2008, in Mazangaro, in Junín Department, killed one government soldier. This area is in the Vrae, the region where the Apurimac and Ene Rivers come together. It's Amazonian rain forest.

The Peruvian military has lost 16 troops along with 8 wounded in four days.

Photos of the Vrae are on this blog here.

Meanwhile, on October 7, in Sitio Kapihan, Barangay Concepcion in Valencia municipality of Bukidnon Province on Mindanao Island, the NPA detonated a roadside bomb against a military vehicle from the Army’s 29th Infantry Battalion, wounding 3 AFP soldiers. Afterward, there was a 5-minute firefight ensued between soldiers and NPA fighters from Front Committee 6.

A photo of a peasant in Valencia municipality, Bukidnon Province, Mindanao. Photo by Bobby Timonera. This could be Guatemala or Ecuador.

Things seem to be hotting up in both Peru and the Philippines lately. A Filipina friend of mine told me yesterday that the NPA are "recruiting everywhere" now, especially on university campuses. A lot of urban Filipinos are apathetic about the conflict and tend towards neutrality. They don't like the NPA much, but they don't really hate them either. Most of them don't seem to think much of the state either.

In Peru, a lot of peasants are pretty much neutral too. There is widespread contempt for the Peruvian state and Peruvian capitalism, which has completely failed to develop the country or provide a bare minimum of a living standard for most people.

I assume there is a draft in both countries. If I were an average Peruvian or Filipino drafted into the military to fight guerrillas, I think I would legitimately ask what the Hell I was even fighting for anyway. I would ask that even if I had little sympathy for the rebels. Why the Hell should I fight and die for a venal, corrupt oligarchy that has been doing nothing but screwing me and mine for decades or centuries. Gimme a reason.

Sendero Stages Deadliest Attack in 10 Years

On Thursday night, October 9, 2008, Shining Path guerrillas attacked a Peruvian military column as it sounded a bend in Tintaypunco, in the Tayacava Province in Huancavelica Department.

A map of Tayacava Province in Huancavelica Department. It's part of the Vrae region of Amazonian rain forest.

The attack left 13 soldiers and 2 civilians dead (earlier reports of 12 soldiers and 7 civilians killed were wrong) and 11 others wounded (8 soldiers and 3 civilians).

The civilians were being transported by the military convoy. The convoy was returning to the Cochabamba Grande military base when it was hit.

A typical road in the Vrae region. Not much, is it? The convoy was probably traveling on a road like this when it was hit.

Sendero attacked the convoy of four trucks with a roadside bomb first, then followed up with automatic weapons fire. The result was a battle that lasted for hours. Vizcatán is in the far northwest corner of Ayacucho Province, in the La Mar District.

A map of the Vizcatán region where Junin, Huancavelica and Ayacucho all come together in the Vrae. Sendero has been holed up here forever and there doesn't seem to be any way to get rid of them.

The previous day, Sendero attacked a military vehicle in Vizcatán, killing 1 soldier.

So far, the offensive has killed 20 soldiers and left 27 more wounded.

Last month, the army said it killed 5 Senderistas on September 14 in Vizcatán, but the rebels denied it. It now appears that the army killed 5 farmers instead. The area of the killings was in Pichis Río Seco, Huarcatán municipality, Ayahuanco District, Huanta Province in Ayacucho Department.

The area is in the jungle near where the Ene and Apurimac Rivers merge, known as the Vrae in Spanish.

A photo of the Apurimac River in the Amazon jungle of Peru. Pretty good sized river, no? A typical swollen, muddy Amazonian river.

Vizcatán is the name of a mountain in the area, a stronghold of Senderistas. Sendero Luminoso has been here for a very long time, and to be honest, they have never been dislodged.

This is a photo of the Vrae region, where the Apurimac and Ene Rivers come together. Amazonian rain forest.

Army forces have recently been carrying out an offensive in the area in the usual fashion, destroying any villages they come upon and and "disappearing" several civilians accused of "links to the guerrillas", whatever that means. Disappearing in this case usually means they are taken away to be killed.

"It is no secret to anyone that Vizcatán is a complicated conflict zone," said Defense Minister Antero Flores-Araoz. "All the people who were in Vizcatán were terrorists, narco-terrorists or collaborators."

Great guy. Any civilian in the area is a collaborator. Kill him. I guess then Sendero has a right to kill any civilian who "collaborates" with the state then? See where this BS mindset heads?

Typical residents of the Vrae. They are very much Amerindian. Wow, they even paint their faces. Guerrillas have actually gotten a fair amount of support from the Indians in the region. They've been treated like shit for hundreds of years. They were slaves far up into the 20th Century, enslaved by rubber tappers who first came to the region in the late 1800's.

This was how this brutal war was fought for many years. 70,000 were killed in this war and though over 50% of the deaths are blamed on guerrillas, actually, the overwhelming majority of the "civilians" killed by Sendero were members of rural militia called rondas.

Sendero now has an estimated strength of 800, quadrupled from 200 in recent years. Abimael Guzman, otherwise known as Presidente Gonzalo, is thought to be directing the war once again through visits to his attorney. He was denied all contact for many years, but now he is being allowed to talk to his lawyer. He supposedly renounced armed struggle in recent years, but I guess he has changed his mind.

I fear that Sendero may be making a comeback at some of the universities that it more or less took over 20 years ago. There's some strange rhetoric in the air and some scary posters on the walls at the University of San Marcos these days. A few years back, I heard Sendero was recruiting in the shantytowns of Lima again. Flush with drug money, they are offering good salaries to join the guerrilla army.

The Los Angeles Times describes the situation in Peru as "deteriorating into virtual civil war". That's probably about right.

This is one hardcore, badass, bunch of crazy guerrillas. They nearly took over in 1992. I don't support them at all, at least not in their former form.

The new Sendero is supposedly on a lot better behavior, paying for livestock and other things from villagers instead of just taking them, and having a much more civilized attitude towards the masses. They are apologizing for their brutal behavior of the past, and in some cases, they are being forgiven and gaining some support again.

Most peasants in these areas are pretty much neutral. The state has never done crap for them anyway, and the guerrillas are often just local men and women. The two main areas of strength these days are the Vrae and the Upper Huallaga Valley.

Sendero is taxing and protecting the coca (cocaine) trade here bigtime, and they are starting to make a lot of money. The government says that Sendero has abandoned its ideology and turned into drug-runners. That sounds dubious to me.

If you want to read some of the most fanatical armed Leftist revolutionaries out there, check out Red Sun, published by the Peru People's Movement, which, in my opinion, is just the Shining Path. Whether it's the Shining Path inside Peru (dubious) or the Shining Path supporters and former leadership outside Peru, especially in Europe, is up in the air.

I suspect that this is published by the Shining Path support committee in Sweden. Anyway, for all intents and purposes, it's just Sendero.

Radical enough for you? They hate the NPA in the Philippines. Sellouts. They despise the revisionists in North Korea. A monarchy and a cult (Well, I do agree with that much). They pour scorn on the Nepalese Maoists. Sellouts, having given up Maoism for parliamentary cretinism. (See Lenin, Two Letters). Hugo Chavez? Fascist. Evo Morales? Same, fascist.

This stuff is nuts, endless ranting and raving, but it's entertaining reading. It's very well-written. The writers are Peruvian intellectuals with a lot of knowledge of economics, history, political science, etc., with a deep emphasis on Peru. One wonders that Peru must have a really horrible system to produce such a fanatical and furious bunch of revolutionaries.

A recent PPP communique is here.

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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In the Shining Path of Ann Dunham

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 April 12:

It's a lie that Sendero Luminoso never had much support. Simon Strong's 1992 book gives the lie to that quite well. In the 18 months following Fujimori's seizure of power, an unbelievable 1.5 million Peruvians were arrested on charges of being members of or collaborating with the Shining Path.

Surveys done at the height of their power indicated that they had the passive support of about 50% of the very poorest in society, with the full support of 16%. Really, to win any revolution you probably need 30% support, but the Bolsheviks did it with a lot less.

In the American Revolution, few Americans know that only 1/3 of Americans support George Washington's bands, another 1/3 were basically traitors supporting the English crown and another 1/3 were pragmatic fence-sitters waiting to see which side was going to win before they decided who to support.

Most people don't realize that in most civil wars you have a huge percentage of fence-sitters who are mostly just trying to stay alive.

Sendero had support even in the churches and in the military. They completely blew it in a lot of ways though, and though they still operate, they are a shadow of what they formerly were.

In my post, Sendero Fades and FARC Rises in Peru, I elaborate how Sendero has faded in Peru only to be replaced by the FARC of Colombia, who have been moving far down into Peru for some time now, and have been doing well with peasants fed up with Sendero's mad violence.

The remains of the MRTA (yes, they still exist also) are up in the far north of Peru in San Martin Province where they always had their main base. Many former rebels from Sendero and the MRTA have basically left those groups and marched off to Colombia for retraining as members of the FARC.

This is part of a FARC regional strategy to expand into the countries surrounding it - there is the FARE in Ecuador, the FARV in Venezuela (which may have 2-3,000 members), the FARB that operates in the Dog's Head region on the Brazilian border of Colombia and I believe the FARP that operates in Peru.

This article from La Rouche Publications (no, I do not endorse them) while a bit over the top, has an excellent roundup and analysis of the Sendero phenomenon. Particularly interesting is the huge support they had in the Peruvian diaspora in Europe, the US and Mexico, with a mind-numbing array of organizations.

In the US, the support was run by the Maoists in the RCP, a large US Maoist group. RCP's homepage is here, and they actually run some decent articles, though I don't support Communism in the US or anywhere else in the First World at the moment - I support some variety of socialism instead, and that can even mean social democracy.
El Diario International is the international paper of Sendero, or at least what remains of it. What is amazing is that this Belgium-based paper still prints a lot of issues, at least on the Net. It's chock full of brand-new raving articles all the time.

I don't read Spanish very well, but maybe someone who does could check it out and come back and report to us in the comments. El Diario del Hoy was Sendero's paper in Peru, but it's long been shut down. I think it reappears clandestinely from time to time.

I have read tons of Sendero propaganda and position statements. These people are completely off the deep end. All existing Communist states are "revisionist" (not real Communists but instead reformist traitors to the movement), and that includes North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and of course China. They despise both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chavez is pegged as some sort of "corporatist fascist".

Sendero does support other armed Maoists like the revolutionaries in the Philippines, Nepal and India (but their most recent editorial condemns the Nepalese Maoists for "capitulation"). The Nepalese revolutionaries have done very well, the NPA in the Philippines is a vast organization, and the Indian Maoists are expanding like mad in the east. I don't have a problem with any of these three movements.

Their position statements, and regular publications of their Red Sun Magazine (both here) are some of the rantingest, ravingest Commie stuff out there (Red Sun (Sol Rojo) 29 in Spanish, Red Sun 29 English supplement). As Peruvian society is evil and the system is a pile of garbage, Peruvian reality drove Senderistas insane. The crazier and more wicked the society, the crazier and more wicked the guerrilla reaction.

The La Rouche link (forget the nonsense about how Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch support Sendero, and forget anything about the UK - LaRouchies have always been insane on the subject of the Crown) makes clear the link between Sendero and radical anthropologists and academics, in particular psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, historians, teachers and agronomists.

The role of anthropologists, both Peruvian and even foreign, as essentially the brainchildren of Sendero is especially glaring.

Just for the record, this blog supports the ELN and FARC in Colombia, and supported the MRTA in Peru, but cannot support the project of Sendero.

The link with anthropologists is especially interesting in that Obama's mother was an anthro, and she has been decried as an America-hater, and this America-hatred of hers can be seen supposedly in both Obama and his wife.

Though I do not care about whether or not Obama and his wife hate America, I think these latest America-hating charges may well be fatal for his campaign, especially with White ethnic working class types (Reagan Democrats), independents and Republicans who were voting for Obama for some bizarre reason.

This Asia Times piece by Spengler is worth reading along those lines. Though I am not a big fan of Spengler, he is definitely worth reading. He tells it like it is all right.

I'm for whichever Dem, the Black or the woman, can beat the Republican clown. At this point it's starting to look like the lady. Women all over the country are fired up and hopping mad about the sexist BS directed at Hillary all through this whole campaign. A bunch of yahoo alpha male dogs showed up at one of Hilary's appearances in New Hampshire and yelped, "Iron my shirts!"

Jeez.

Good for American women for standing up to this sexist crap. Everyone should stand up for their rights, and I applaud my sisters. This blog will never attack Hilary on sexist grounds.