Yet another suspicious slum fire in Panay City, Philippines

PANAY slum fire (Reuters) Feb 17 2015

And yet another slum fire in Manila, Philippines! The fire yesterday was in Pasay City, a southern part of Manila bordering Manila Bay. The suburbs ringing the bay are under a massive redevelopment & gentrification program including business parks, IT & call centers, upscale shopping malls, resorts, sweatshop & free trade zones, & other infrastructure projects designed to attract investment. To facilitate that program, the Filipino regime has changed laws allowing public property to be privatized & requiring the forcible eviction of thousands of slum dwellers, making them homeless.

There are dozens of these slum fires every year in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Cambodia, & many other countries & they are usually associated with attempts to forcibly evict residents. In the Philippines, slum residents have fought years of legal battles to prevent eviction because public housing & relocation sites are not provided so they would be forced into homelessness. Instead, the Filipino regime has simply sent demolition squads & bulldozers to raze the slums where thousands of people live.

Residents have not gone away obediently & without protest; there have been repeated street battles between residents & riot cops armed with tear gas, water cannons, & bulldozers. So it appears developers have decided arson is the better part of plunder & simply torch the shanty homes to avoid resistance. Officials always give the same explanation for hundreds of slum fires in major cities: a cooking accident, residents pirating power lines, flimsy, flammable building materials, or sometimes “cause unknown”. But there are similar patterns to the fires in every country: fire trucks are delayed in getting to the scene; fire inspectors can’t determine the cause of the conflagrations; many residents give cogent testimony supporting their suspicions the fires were arson; many fires were after mass eviction notices.

There have been hundred of fatalities in the fires, including small children, the elderly, & the disabled still at home while others worked. Many fires take place while people are still sleeping. Every fire leaves thousands homeless. In the Panay City fire which began before dawn, fire officials report four people were burned to death, including a pregnant woman & two children. An estimated 4,500 people were left homeless. Fire officials said the fire was due to flammable building materials but are still investigating the cause; residents alleged arson since the slum was slated for demolition next year. Arson for purposes of redevelopment & gentrification is the most credible explanation.

Housing is a human right & must become a central political demand in every country.

(Photo of fire in Panay City by Reuters)

Sarcasm returns with a vengeance: murderous Egyptian regime denounces gunman in Copenhagen

Egypt just publicly denounced the two shootings in Copenhagen. Just when you think satire might be dead, something comes along to make your head explode, something that makes mockery of tragedy & irony & reduces it all to a mush of obscenity & farce. This latest fiasco is a continuation of that “Je suis” spectacle in Paris led by Netanyahu & other war criminals.

At least Felipe, the giant sponge who calls himself king of Spain, had the smarts to stay home & strut around the palace in a military uniform muttering damnations over Charlie Hebdo rather than show up in Paris marching for free speech when he’s cracking down on it in Spain. General el-Sisi’s regime is made of dumber stuff. Egypt’s Foreign Minister said there are distinctions between true Islam & the ideologies of “terrorist groups, which incite violence & killing.” He said it was important to respect religious symbols out of respect for Muslims but that disrespect does not justify use of violence against others. Who can argue with that!? It’s just that Egypt has murdered hundreds of activists, including massacring hundreds of Muslims when el-Sisi took over in July 2013 & since. Just a few weeks ago, they shot at unarmed protesters, murdering Shaimaa Sabagh. Hundreds have been jailed, tortured, disappeared. So where’s all the respect!?

Has the Egyptian regime expressed outrage over dozens of assaults & arsons against Muslims all over Europe & the US–like the shooting of the three young people in Chapel Hill last week? But it really wouldn’t matter if they did or didn’t because they’re shooting Muslim activists right & left in Egypt. Whatever they say would be more akin to flatulence.

According to latest reports, there is yet no certainty about the gunmen’s motives in Copenhagen. So why would Egypt jump to conclusions before all the forensics are in? A regime that runs kangaroo courts for dissidents doesn’t require evidence before it starts shooting. Why would it need evidence to start condemning?

The children in Israel’s gulag for stone throwing; or for no crime at all

Malak al-Khatib (Jaafar Ashtiyeh:AFP:Getty) Feb 16 2015

This is 14-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl Malak al-Khatib being embraced by family in the West Bank village of Tulkarem after her release from the Israeli gulag. She was arrested December 31st after getting caught picking up a stone. Under Israeli military law (employed only against Palestinians defending their lands & not against Zionist settlers trying to take it), stone throwing is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

After Khatib was arrested, she was held three weeks before facing a judge in a military court where she was charged with stone throwing & possession of a knife. Is carrying a knife also illegal under Israeli military occupation? How about nail clippers or a pair of scissors?
Under a plea agreement she was given a sentence of two months, a $1,500 fine, & three years’ probation. For what exactly? Holding a stone? Israeli authorities claim she confessed that she “intended to throw stones at Israeli cars & was going to stab an official that tried to arrest her.” The confession of a terrified 14-year-old girl, without her attorney present, under interrogation by racist, hateful soldiers has zilch, zip, nada credibility that wouldn’t hold water in most kangaroo courts. As her father so brilliantly put it, “A 14-year-old girl surrounded by Israeli soldiers will admit to anything. She would admit to holding a nuclear weapon if she were accused.”

But there’s another legal problem. Shouldn’t she be charged for a crime she actually committed rather than one she allegedly only intended to commit? Are Israeli soldiers mind-readers now too? The case set off a fury of protests in the West Bank, not only because she didn’t commit a crime but also because there are now over 250 Palestinian kids being held in the Israeli gulag for throwing stones. She was released after serving 44 days of the two-month sentence for the alleged crime of thinking bad thoughts.

Media coverage of Khatib’s arrest is telling: the BBC caption to this photo said “Malak was jailed for six weeks for planning to attack Israelis.” The Guardian-UK article referred to “the Israel police’s Judea & Samaria division.” Actually Judea & Samaria hasn’t existed since the 8th century BCE; it is the name Israel gave to the West Bank to legitimize it’s Biblical claim to Palestine. Using language that legitimizes colonialism & occupation is a dead giveaway for bias. But at least the phony claim of objectivity in journalism stands exposed.

(Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty)

The season of mass weddings

Mass wedding Nepal (Narendra Shrestha:EPA) Feb 16 2015

This must be the season of mass weddings since media is filled with photos of them, including one officiated by the pope. Several years ago, Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah, right-wing activist, showman, & cultist founder of the Unification Church, was vilified in media for holding mass weddings all over the world among his followers. Despite Moon’s grandstanding spectacles, it’s apparently an old custom going back at least as far as Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. Mass nuptials are held in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, & the US. A lot of gays are now getting married at such love-ins.

The economic reasons for mass weddings are obvious: church weddings everywhere cost a bundle. It’s reported that less than half of Filipino Catholic couples have church ceremonies due to expense; the rest marry in mass civil ceremonies. There were 2,000 couples at one such ceremony. Last Saturday, 1,690 couples were married in Mexico City. A 2011 ceremony in India involved 3,600 couples, including Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims. It doesn’t get more ecumenical than that.

In this ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal (on Feb. 8th), you can see mass nuptials are not dour events, bereft of beauty. That’s because love is in the air.

(Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)

Something’s up with the US ministry of war

Leon Panetta Feb 15 2015

Normally I don’t concern myself with personnel matters in US regimes but it appears Obama has some problems with his Secretary of Defense–and when war is the primary industry of the US government that’s a whopper of a problem.

Last November, the current war minister, Chuck Hagel announced his resignation under pressure for some undefined issues about ISIL. But Obama hasn’t replaced him & he continues to hang around in hangdog fashion–a chastened & defeated man. I wish I gave a rat’s ass but public humiliation seems the least of what that schnook deserves.

So now Hagel’s predecessor, Leon Panetta is the guy they’re trotting out to speak about ISIL, acting like the minister of war & preempting Hagel completely. Panetta is a Mr. Magoo look-alike & hard to take seriously even when he saber-rattles. Something about him makes you want to slap him silly.

Is there some problem with US strategy regarding ISIL? Do they just not know what the hell to do with this monstrous situation they’ve created? Is it time to take this pack of murderous war criminals down & set up a government that everybody in the world doesn’t hate for just cause?

(Photo of Panetta)