SWAT-style policing against protesters around the world

Pepper spray victim Ferguson in August 2014 (Adrees Latif:Reuters) Dec 27 2014

This extraordinary photo was taken in Ferguson last August at a late-night protest against the murder of Michael Brown. This man was among protesters yelling at the cops & was targeted by them with what looked like pepper spray. They maliciously got him right in the face. His friends immediately pulled him into a nearby parking lot to treat him by flushing the pepper spray with milk.

We have seen this kind of violence against protesters all over the world; the only way to put an end to it is to make protests massive & mighty. Regimes around the world have completely abandoned Barney Fife-style policing for a SWAT team approach because they have no solutions to the global crisis of capitalism except austerity programs & repressive policing. The erupting civil rights & Black power movement is particularly threatening because it shakes the very foundations of their control including military policy which is rooted in racism & divide & conquer strategy between working people to keep us hating on each other rather than directing our outrage at them.

They are accustomed for decades now to using SWAT team policing in the Black community & don’t know how to operate any other way. Just as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s put an end to extreme violence like water cannons & attack dogs, the new movements around the world will have to put an end to police assaults on the right to free speech & assembly.

(Photo by Adrees Latif/Reuters)

Knuckleheads stand for civil liberties by viewing “The Interview”

There’s only one thing to say to those who think they’re taking a stand for civil liberties by going to a showing of the Seth Rogen film “The Interview”. You’re gonna suffer for your idiocy–through appalling acting, frat boy humor, & political burlesque. Good to talk tough to North Korea but computer magazines claim it’s more likely an inside job at Sony. But march on for freedom. If you buy pop & popcorn with your ticket, you’ll really be run around the block. Consider yourself fleeced in more ways than one.

The Afghan Taliban and attacks on schools

Afghan school in Pakistan (Muhammed Muheisen:AP) Dec 22 2014

The Afghan Taliban have strongly denounced the school massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistan Taliban. This is mighty curious & merits some investigation since media has been reporting for all of the 13-year US-NATO war that the Taliban targets schools in Afghanistan (especially girls’ schools) for terrorist attacks. In fact, just two-weeks ago the Taliban were implicated (wrongly or rightly) in a teenage suicide bombing at an elite French-run high school in Kabul.

Investigation doesn’t come easy, not just because of the paucity of reliable information, but because the media is busy pumping out propaganda to justify the war & doesn’t take time to fact check or report the whole story. The heart of war propaganda is the role of US-NATO marines & bombs in liberating Afghan women from the Taliban & reality is not allowed to interfere with that narrative.

When we say information is unreliable we mean it doesn’t exist unless we consider Islamophobic websites, US-NATO generals, & disreputable NGOs reliable sources. The Taliban may well be involved in targeting schools but only a fool would take the word of such sources. A case in point would be Richard Kemp, a former Commander of British forces in Afghanistan & intelligence coordinator for the British government. (It should go without saying that “intelligence” here means surveillance & not cognitive skills so little evidenced in the British ruling elite.) In 2009, Kemp wrote: “Like Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in southern Afghanistan are masters at shielding themselves behind the civilian population & then melting in among them for protection. Women & children are trained & equipped to fight, collect intelligence, & ferry arms & ammunition between battles. Female suicide bombers are increasingly common. The use of women to shield gunmen as they engage NATO forces is now so normal it is deemed barely worthy of comment. Schools & houses are routinely booby-trapped. Snipers shelter in houses deliberately filled with women and children.”

So with that explanation we can understand why US-NATO forces don’t discriminate against women but are all-embracing in their slaughter, taking out men, women, children, & livestock too & are not just bombing schools but entire villages, including homes, bus stations, fuel trucks, buses, cars, tractors, clinics, hospitals, mosques, power plants.

In 2009, CARE (the relief NGO) did a report titled “Knowledge on Fire: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan” & managed 85 pages without a peep about the US-NATO war & the affects of bombing on education. They admit their information is unreliable due to “under-reporting, wrong information & partial information” but they stand by it anyway. Such reliability in a 7th grade book report wouldn’t wing it past the school teacher even in a charter school.

One interesting thing the report does reveal is that the Taliban aren’t the only ones interested in Afghan education. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), Kissinger’s “charity”, & Save the Children, the disreputable group that gave war criminal Tony Blair a humanitarian award, are also engaged with Afghan education–that is, whatever is left of it after US-NATO bombings. One could consider the two organizations a weapon of mass destruction lobbed not just at Afghan education but anything they come near.

Another group that doesn’t come out smelling like a rose in an investigation is the UN who claims the majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban & other insurgent groups. Thirteen years of carpet bombing & the UN still can’t bring itself to condemn the US-NATO war. It still runs interference for colonialism.

Millions of Afghan refugees fled to Pakistan & Iran–& it should be mentioned there are reports that fleeing vehicles were bombed on the roads. Millions live in slums & mud huts & get their education al fresco. This is a school for Afghan refugees outside Islamabad, Pakistan.

US-NATO out of Afghanistan! The only hope for Afghan education is the end of this barbarous war.

(Photo by Muhammad Muheisen/AP)

Pope Francis and the Curia

Curia (PBS news video) Dec 23 2014

He still has silence about Gaza on his conscience, but you have to give Pope Francis his due for taking the Vatican Curia to task (publicly, no less) for “spiritual Alzheimer’s.” The video on TV news shows a bunch of very sullen men (they are ancient but age shouldn’t mean petrified) listening as he berated them for gossip, cliques & power intrigues, careerism, hypocritical double lives “typical of mediocre & progressive spiritual emptiness.” Ouch! If there were term limits for the papacy, he’s just reached one.

His predecessors must be turning over in their graves–or in the case of Benedict, over in his crypt. What’s up with this pope? Is he just grandstanding over secondary reproaches? He must have been part of that bureaucratic culture before he became pope. Will he challenge the primary issues like the place of women in Catholicism? Work to reverse the reproductive proscriptions or damnations of LGBT people who are not celibate?

(Photo of Curia from PBS news video of Cardinals listening to pope)

Merry Christmas & good will toward all

Christmas 2014

2014 will be a memorable year not because so much misery prevailed but because so many people around the world stood up against it. Most notably, Palestinian solidarity is now a political force to be reckoned with; Intifada has gone international & Palestinians no longer stand alone. And in the US, a new civil rights & Black power movement is forming to challenge not just police violence against Blacks but systemic racism, a pivot of US neoliberal control. Solidarity has gone international & the Black community no longer stands alone.

Palestinians & Blacks have been vilified for decades as terrorists & violence against them seemed justified. Those rancid narratives are now in tatters & there is hope for justice. It’s solidarity with their intransigence that’s made all the difference.

There is much hard work ahead but all in all 2014 has been a monumental year. One can’t say a good year since resistance was borne of such terrible suffering by so many. But suffering humanity around the world is taking note & getting new heart because resistance to tyranny is an inspiring thing.

Lace-Curtain Irish getting on their “Irishness”

Irishness (The Broken Elbow.com) Dec 23 2014

Irish Central is the online media voice of Lace-Curtain Irish in the US. Lace-Curtain Irish are those of Irish ancestry (& just as often those morphed from the snakes St. Patrick banished from Ireland) who because of acquired wealth (often through theft & crime) & insufferable pretensions grovel their way into WASP circles. The editors claim their purpose is to help Americans of Irish ancestry reconnect with their “Irishness,” with their their “special & wondrous heritage.” Is it more wondrous than being Lithuanian? More special than Italianness? Do they mean historic “Irishness” or the mythological one? Or is it more mystical than that? Or is it just a preference (or at least not a repugnance) for green beer?

Just to show how low they go to get accepted into WASP circles, their editor Niall O’Dowd accused NYC mayor de Blasio of demonizing the NYPD in the wake of the Eric Garner verdict. O’Dowd wants de Blasio to go after the protesters & he singles out Al Sharpton. If he finds Sharpton offensive imagine his views of the rest of the protesters! Our man O’Dowd only understands groveling; rebellion is no part of his nature.

Now our man has published a list of some of the most hated figures in Irish history–& a despicable lot they are: Oliver Cromwell, who used Ireland as a killing field; those English officials who administered “The Great Hunger” (more properly called a genocide); Winston Churchill, who deployed the Black & Tans to Ireland; Colonel Derek Wilford, known as “the Butcher of the Bogside” for ordering British troops to fire on unarmed protesters in Derry on “Bloody Sunday” (1972); & Margaret Thatcher, who allowed ten IRA prisoners on hunger strike to starve to death (may the Iron Lady “Rust In Peace”).

What, no Bono? And we’ll leave our damnation at that.
Photo is image of American connecting with his “Irishness.”

(Photo from brokenelbow.com)

NYC police go on offensive to defend right to brutalize Black community

It’s one thing for police officials to come out slugging against charges of police brutality in the Black community. They are on the defensive after international exposure of their arrant violence in the Black community. They must consider the murder of two NYPD officers a sign from God that they should go on the offensive & regain the right to brutalize with impunity.

But now media enters the fray, clearly to change the narrative from police brutality against Blacks to how the new civil rights movement endangers cops. It don’t get more cynical or detestable than that because the guy who murdered the cops was deranged, not a civil rights activist.

Local TV news took a poll with the single question: “Is the current political climate putting the safety of police officers at risk?” The “current political climate” is nothing less than public opposition to police impunity & nothing more than a demand for justice. The NYC mayor is calling on civil rights protesters to stop in order to heal the rift between cops & the community. If they reverse the kangaroo court verdicts letting killer cops walk free & prosecute, that would be a beginning–though a long way from the end. Until then, the protests continue.

Loyalty to Israel de rigueur for US candidates

Isn’t it telling that those considering running for US president first have to profess loyalty to Israel? Clinton has made dozens of bellicose protestations not just of her commitment to Israel but her affections for Netan-psycho; Elizabeth Warren & Ben Carson actually made recent pilgrimages there to kiss Netan-psycho’s butt.

Claiming AIPAC runs the US is a variation on Hitler’s Jewish bankers claim. Zionist Jews are integrated into the US power structure; that’s not the same as saying they run the country. In fact, those who dole out the dough control the politics. As long as the US Congress is allocating billions to Israel, the US runs the show & keeps Israel on a long leash so the unseemly dependency is not observed. These spats between Obama & Netan-psycho don’t amount to a hill of beans because the disputes aren’t over the character of Zionist apartheid but over the tempo of ethnic cleansing.

It’s not about Zionists running the US; it’s about the investment US neoliberalism has in Israel for control of the Middle East (the US does not want that jeopardized by Israeli recklessness) & it’s about Palestinian justice.

Emancipation US-style in Afghanistan

Afghanistan outdoor school (Noorullah Shirzada:AFP:Getty Images) Dec 21 2014

Emancipation US-style: these are children in an outdoor school in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan–adjacent to Pakistan on the east & Kabul province on the west. Jalalabad, the capital of the province, is 86 miles (153 km) from Kabul city (the capital of Afghanistan). Because Afghanistan is a land-locked country, US-NATO forces truck fuel & non-lethal equipment (munitions are flown in) through Pakistan’s roads, including the Kabul-Jalalabad Road.

Nangarhar is one of the principal agricultural areas in Afghanistan. This no longer means growing wheat, chickpeas, or corn but bumper crops of opium poppies for the export market. Afghanistan is the source of over 80% of the world’s opium. In 2008, the UN declared Nangarhar “poppy-free” but a recent report by the US oversight agency on Afghanistan reconstruction (which draws its figures from UN statistics) reported a fourfold increase in poppy production between 2012 & 2013.

The report claims the US spent nearly $8 billion to stop opium production. It’s true the US stages periodic drug burning ceremonies to dramatize its eradication program–just like they report some drug raids on the US-Mexican border. But the report does not explain why US troops are patrolling the poppy fields or why US aircraft are flying the stuff out for processing.

The report claims the Taliban fund their operations from opium profits but does not elaborate how they get tons of poppy plants out of the country without aircraft. Are they trucking it out on the same roads used by US-NATO? Are they waving at each other as they pass? It also blames Afghan farmers caught between chickpeas & the super-profits of opium & beholden to drug lords. So is it the Taliban or drug lords (many with close associations with the Afghan regime & hence the US) profiting from the poppies? It sure as hell ain’t the farmers.

Meanwhile healthcare in Nangarhar continues to decline. In 2005, 43% of households had access to clean water; by 2011 only 8% did. Healthcare has long been a disaster with over 60% of women giving birth without assistance. A US air force officer involved in discussions with Afghan officials said the healthcare catastrophe was due to “communication barriers” between the Afghan & US governments & NGOs. Funny that, since there are so few barriers when it comes to military operations.

US-NATO are now on a siege of Nangarhar, using drones to hunt down Taliban. That probably explains why kids are being schooled al fresco; the schools have been taken out by drones. Now the kids have no place to run, no place to hide. Of course, the drones could just as easily take out those poppy fields but as the Pentagon sees it, ‘why cut off your nose to spite your face’?

(Photo by Noorullah Shirzada/AFP/Getty Images)

George Clooney spouting off again

George Clooney’s already limited cache of sex appeal diminishes every time he opens his mouth & utters an opinion. It’s now to the point where it’s hemorrhaging to a fatal conclusion. In short, he’s a war-monger & a weasel of a dude with a John Wayne complex in the persona of an antihero–antihero not in the sense of roguish individualism but in the sense of antisocial psychosis.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/19/george-clooney-sony-pictures-hack-the-interview