Know before you speak

Someone wrote to me asking what I think of operations of peace/war (de según como se mire todo depende, song the Jarabe De Palo) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

First of all I believe that Afghanistan and Iraq are two places in the same adventure, with the necessary differences.
That said, I think that the best answer is this article in Voltaire Net written by Michael Schwartz, Professor at Stony Brook University of the state of New York, which presents the famous research of the prestigious American medical journal "The Lancet" on the number of casualties in Iraq and talks about what we call "rules of engagement" of the American soldiers in Iraq.
Just read it: http://www.voltairenet.org/article149840.html

In this regard someone pointed out to me a few days ago this film on youtube: An American scandal (in Italian).

Furthermore on the blog Alessio in Asia I read the following comment:

"I feel that if we withdraw from IRAQ, there might be terror."
Wow… if there might be terror… I wonder… what's going on since "we" invaded Iraq ?

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)

We talk but we don't understand each other

Go to wikipedia page Languages spoken in Italy

A recent study by Survival International says that every months two languages of the existing 6,000 in the world die. Continuing on this way, the linguistic heritage of humanity will be halved at the end of this century. To avoid this cultural catastrophe the United Nations has proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages.

The death of a language is a complex phenomenon, often related to the spreading of dominant languages such as English, Arabic or Spanish, which are, according to the linguist Michael Krauss, "a genuine cultural nerve gas". Today, 96 percent of the world's population speaks only 4 per cent of languages.
In practice a language dies when the last person who speaks it dies, but it's always a foretold death. The survival of a language is tied to a minimum number (one hundred thousand) of people who speak it. Below this number there is a risk of death.
Underlying this phenomenon is almost always a distorted political attitude: the protection of minor languages is not with conferences and debates, but allowing and enhancing their use. Spain, Russia, India and South Africa are some examples of effective recognition and protection of linguistic diversity.
In 2001 the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity was signed, which poses as an objective "to protect the linguistic heritage of humanity and defend the expressive capacity and dissemination of as many languages as possible. To encourage linguistic diversity, while respecting the mother tongue and stimulate multilingualism learning from a very early age". On the other side almost everywhere we find a 'totalitarian' idea of State which is expressed, among other things, by the enhancement of the exclusive official language, to the detriment of individual mother languages, often neglected, declassified and repressed. Italy is a good example in this regard.

The disappearance of a language is not a theoretical loss but a social catastrophe. Every language is an expression of a system of thought that disappears when it is unable to express itself anymore. The repression of a language brings unstoppable social tensions because entire generations are deprived of the opportunity to study with profit, to dialogue with the institutions, to take part in public life and, ultimately, to integrate into civil society, because it is forbidden to do so in their mother tongue.
The repression of a mother tongue always leads to a situation of exclusion of women and men who have not chosen which language to speak.

Invisible Colours of Benetton

Watch the presentation
Go the website of the campaign The invisible colours of Benetton

This is from an article which appeared about a year ago on Selvas.org: (translated from Italian)

On 14 February (2007) they came before dawn and asked the forces of nature to work with them, then they established themselves in a community, claiming it back for the ancestors that "lived free on those lands and are now objects in museums and trophies of a culture that destroys anything which is different." The Mapuche are back to occupy the land that they demanded for years and that is part of the large estate of Benetton in Argentinean Patagonia.

On a Mapuche site we read:

The Italian fashion brand Benetton is well known for it's 'provocative'
promotion campaigns that appear to be socially critical.
But the internationally operating company is itself involved in dirty deals.
In south Argentina, Benetton has bought almost one million hectares of land.
The local population, mostly Mapuche indigenous people, are forcefully removed from this area.

Nineteenth century invasions, illegal sales, donations to a nobel prize... A true South American soap opera. To understand more, you can do a simple search on google: "Benetton vs. Mapuche". And read.
Benetton clothing is beautiful and relatively inexpensive, but what's behind that cotton or wool?
It doesn't matter how much you wash them, certain items will never be clean.

Verschärfte Vernehmung

Letter from America (abridged)

Saturday, March 8, 2008

By David Wright

Today an event occurred that is so despicable, so devoid of all that’s decent; an event so pervasive that its fallout will eventually affect every corner of society. Remember this date; on Saturday, March 8 2008, the United States endorsed the use of torture. By signing a veto of the Bill from Congress banning torture, President Bush has approved its use. The President brutalized his society. And it will have an effect.
Condoning State violence will eventually touches us all. In time, state brutality perverts everyone. Our State does not call it torture of course, preferring, “Advanced Interrogation Techniques”. This from Wikipedia:

“The former editor of The New Republic Andrew Sullivan claimed that "enhanced interrogation" bears remarkable resemblance to the techniques the Gestapo called "Verschärfte Vernehmung", for which some of them faced prosecution after World War II and were "found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death." Besides the similarity of the practices, the German term "verschärfte Vernehmung" may be translated as "enhanced interrogation".
A 1948 Norwegian court case described the use of hypothermia identical to the reports from Guantanamo Bay. The defense used by the Nazis for applying the techniques "is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration." Most notably the concept of unlawful enemy combatant is invoked to justify its implementation on "insurgent prisoners out of uniform". The now familiar ticking time bomb scenario as a rationale for allowing torture had its precursor in the Gestapo's "Third degree" measures. But while the Nazis' interrogative methods were found to be torture, The New York Times writes that the Allies' methods at the time were far more effective and far less abusive than those the United States uses now.”

It remains to their eternal shame that Clinton and Obama were too busy getting themselves elected, to get back to Washington and vote for the ban-on-torture measure. It goes to show the extent to which our society has already accepted force, pain and evil. But if you think their neglect was bad consider this. John McCain did turn up and voted against the Bill. Six years of being tortured by the citizens of the last country the United States invaded and McCain learned nothing. Whether through their neglect or action those wanting to guide this nation through the next four years have made a pretty poor start.

The "Stolen Generation"

Watch the video

We often hear talk about the primacy of Western culture that has brought freedom and democracy to the world, defeating over time bloody dictatorships, totalitarian ideologies and empires of evil.
As an example of the cultural superiority of the free West, here are some parts of an article taken from the Berliner Zeitung, February 29, 2008 on the so-called 'stolen generation'.

"Between 1910 and 1970 ten thousand Aboriginal children were taken away by force from their homes to be adopted by 'white' families, in a programme endorsed by the state. This was for the sake of the children themselves, as a minority of Australians still believe.
In 1997 a research paper entitled 'Bringing them home' made public these striking violations of human rights. Historians speak of attempted genocide. The removal of children was solely intended to prevent the transmission of the culture and language of the Aborigines. (abridged)
Ten years have passed during which the then Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise to the Aborigines before Parliament. Only his successor Kevin Rudd broke the silence by creating recently the 'National Sorry Day', to be celebrated on February 13, and apologising several times both personally and on behalf of the institutions. For the approximately 450,000 Aboriginal Australians finally being recognized this has immense significance.
Not all, however, are euphoric over the apologies of the Prime Minister. The government allegedly still did not mention even a word about the stolen lands and massacres which occurred. An increasingly large number of Aboriginal claim also economic compensation."

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)

Terrorism Works!

In recent days we have been able to read in the newspapers of the threat of Uighuri, Muslim terrorists, allies of Al Qaeda, which could strike during the Olympic Games. At least so we read in newspaper headlines.

On reading more carefully it turns out that this is the separatists of the so-called East Turkestan, but the Chinese are angered to hear that; for them it is the Xinjiang.
We discovered that these people are turcophone, who have always been Muslim and related to the Turks and not at all to the Chinese, and have an ancient history.
We discovered that from mid-1800 to mid-1900 the province has tried several times to be independent, before being to be liberated / invaded by the People's Liberation Army, the same who liberated / invaded Tibet. Points of view!
In the books we learn that the Chinese assimilation of Eastern Turkmenistan is known as the peaceful liberation of Xinjiang, except that the people are not all in agreement. Furthermore you find that this nation has been strong culturally but politically repressed by the Chinese government, at least according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
These cultural and social tensions periodically provoke violent clashes: in 1962 there were clashes which caused the exodus of 60,000 people; in 1990 there were 50 deaths; in 1997 there were riots and bomb attacks.

Reducing all this to 'bad Muslim allies of Al Qaeda' is the result of the worst kind of journalism that fills the pages of Big Brother and reduce to very few lines what happens in the world.
If they had not threatened the sacred Olympic Games, who would have ever heard of bad Uighuri in Xinjiang?
Terrorism therefore works.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)

Just two imbeciles...

The video is offensive and cannot be seen without registration

To be imbeciles there is no need to be soldiers or to be Americans, and these two imbeciles in the video should not be considered either as soldiers or as Americans.
They are only two big imbeciles.

Moreover there are imbeciles in all countries and in all categories. Surely, for example, there will be in Guatemala a waggoner who is an imbecile. But a Guatemalan waggoner does not claim to bring civilization and democracy in the world and if he is an imbecile, too bad for him, certainly he will not do much damage.

Listen to reactions on CNN

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)