CBS reported tonight there are more refugees in the world than at any time since WWII, mostly from Syria & Iraq. And of course, they blamed it all on ISIS. They didn’t mention reliable reports that ISIS was “fueled” by US-UK policy.

While not having much political value, nothing could be more revealing than the endless discussions about the imposture of Rachel Dolezal. We endure outright silliness with objections to her lying—as if this was all a catechism lesson—& we watch academics use this to go after identity politics. Mostly we see long-winded tracts about gender & ethnic “essentialism.” The question of Caitlyn Jenner gets entangled & no matter how many want it excluded, that discussion is completely relevant.

This preoccupation with a case of impersonating a Black person has less to do with Dolezal than with the deep chasms of anxiety felt by those who are dominant in supremacist societies. Blackface, “playing Indian,” & men dressing as women (not necessarily transgenders) remain methods of mockery & ridicule even though the more egregious forms like minstrel shows were discredited by the civil rights struggle. Disguise & playing out of fantasies about Blacks, Indians, women may call fixed identity into question but in politics it reflects psychological strain from empowering yourself by humiliating others.

One of the most perceptive observers of this phenomenon is Philip J. Deloria in his 1998 book “Playing Indian,” where he describes how whites incorporated Indian traditions, rituals, images, language, dress into social & political life to create an American nationalist identity—including the Boston Tea Party, fraternal orders, the Boy Scouts & Camp Fire Girls, hippies, sports teams, military weaponry, Grateful Dead concerts. Talk about cultural appropriation!

Indianness & idealizing Indians in forging a national identity was fraught with anxiety & ambivalence because it derived from simultaneously exterminating the native peoples in the most barbaric ways. One of the apogees of role play was during the extermination campaigns against the Plains tribes in the central US after the Civil War.

Minstrel shows & blackface which began in the early 19th century under slavery did not idealize Blacks but infantilized & burlesqued them as stupid, lazy, & superstitious. They ridiculed slaves at the same time they portrayed them as happy under “the peculiar institution,” in accord with histories of slavery up until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when Black studies & historians changed all that.

The mockery of women is now so incorporated into culture that one can hardly begin to unravel its malignancies but the glorification of prostitution & pornography are key to all of that—where women & their sexuality are demeaned as objects of violence & exhibitionism. And in some circles, it’s called empowerment. Talk about infantilizing!

Judith Butlerizing the discussion around Dolezal & ethnic identify has not clarified things one iota. No matter how many prominent writers & academics say so, one cannot claim—in the era of racist wars overseas & murderous assaults on the Black community in the US—that one can choose their ethnic identity like they choose a hair style. It isn’t the lying that’s the problem but the whole damn charade of acting like you can possibly understand the profound humiliations for being Black—even if you’re uncomfortable in your own skin & fixed identity is in dispute. The entire edifice of racist oppression is institutional, political, social, cultural, emotional. If whites suffer identity problems as a result, passing is not the solution. Political action is.

Racist & gender oppression & violence are social constructs. Those who denounce identity politics (which they usually refrain from describing) want all of us to march together against capitalism as class sisters & brothers. Talk about romanticism! The civil rights, women’s, & LGBT movements erupted historically as a political response to oppression. What political action can derive from a simple-minded approach that tells women, Blacks, et al, to stop whining about their special demands & form ranks in unity against our common oppressor when the front lines of that oppression are our “class brothers”?

Do we see legions of white guys forming ranks to help stop the violence against Black teens? Are they out there by the thousands to defend abortion clinics & women’s reproductive rights? Are the white guys chock-a-block against assaults on Muslims? Or in defense of immigrants? They couldn’t even get the mostly white union leadership to oppose child labor for farmworkers in 2012. If freedom from oppression is won by working people on their own behalf, that is just as true for those who face extreme burdens of social hatred.

Truth of the matter is, for all our scientific sophistication, human beings understand very little about ourselves because our society circumscribes that so harshly. We know we’re not born to hate; we know the highest achievements of humanity are built on trying to communicate with each other. That doesn’t mean philosophical speculations about our nature, including ethnic & gender identities, should cease but that elaborating a political program of unity in action against racist & misogynist oppression is far more important.

(Photo is cover of Playing Indian by Philip Deloria)

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This is Sana’a, Yemen where a camarilla of several feudal monarchies are bombing democracy into existence. Can you see it blooming? This is the kind of democracy you get when feudal monarchies, military juntas, psycho-states, & neoliberal military machines run the planet. This is their kind of democracy. This is Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan.

This is a clarion call, a red alert to gather the international forces of democracy like we saw in the Arab uprisings, including Yemen. Rebuilding the international antiwar movement has never been more urgent. Some can sniff at the call with contempt because they disdain the power of popular opposition to tyranny. Cynics never have led social change; they just stand on the sidelines saying it can’t be done.

Humanity may not learn much from history & may keep repeating the same mistakes but one irrefutable fact is that the only times tyranny has been overthrown is when working people take justice into their own hands & rise up to change things. What we haven’t yet learned is how to forge a new society & maintain it. But now we know with the certainty of too much experience that democracy in every facet of life is the sine qua non of social transformation. And bombs play no part in that.

Rebuild the international antiwar movement. No to US-NATO wars!

(Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

An Egyptian kangaroo court upheld the death sentence of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. In Egypt, that’s by hanging or firing squad. He’s guilty of treacheries against the Egyptian people–in particular, colluding with the military while in office–but he is not guilty of the charges against him, including plotting a jailbreak, attacking police in the 2011 Egyptian uprising, & spying for Hamas & Hezbollah.

We can disagree till the cows come home about the nature of the coup that bounced him; we can even disagree about the character of his politics. But we should be able to agree that the ferocious crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood by the General Sisi junta is an outrage–whether you like the MB’s politics or not or condemn their reactionary role while Morsi was in office. Hundreds have been killed & thousands incarcerated.

President Erdogan of Turkey has offered political asylum to Morsi. It’s not that smart to hang politicians that played ball with the junta & the oligarchs. There’ll be fewer minions willing to do it in the next crisis–which is certain to come. So it’s still possible Morsi will get a reprieve to Turkey.

He was no rebel or champion of democracy; on the contrary, he was a violent opponent of the Egyptian uprising. But a show trial in a kangaroo court is not justice. It’s an attempt of the junta to demoralize & destroy every vestige of popular resistance. Morsi & the MB are scapegoats.You can detest the role of the MB when Morsi was in office but you cannot in justice stand mute while the regime goes after them hammer & tong, assaulting them, shooting them down, arresting & torturing them, declaring them a terrorist organization. The defense of the MB today is the defense of the Egyptian revolution.

These show trials make crystal clear how linked the Palestinian struggle is to the Egyptian revolution. When the kangaroo court made Hamas a centerpiece in the trial it is because solidarity between Palestinians & Egyptians is the very heart of social transformation in the Middle East.

Our fullest solidarity with the MB under attack & our strongest condemnation of this kangaroo travesty.

(Photo of Morsi in his courtroom cage from EPA)

Just when you think US political campaigns can’t get any more farcical, Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president. There’s a Monty Python skit in there somewhere. To think that Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton could possibly look good by comparison! It’s probably the hair. When I concede defeat in 2016, I may be booking a flight off the mainland.

Just like refugees at the border between Morocco & the Spanish territories of Ceuta & Melilla have Moroccan cops beating them from the rear & Spanish cops beating them from the front, African refugees here at Ventimiglia, Italy on the border with France have Italian police trying to drag them back & French police trying to keep them out. And to think that just a week ago, the Italian government was pledging to deny them shelter & right-wing politicians in the north were vowing to keep them out of the northern Italian provinces. Now they’re fighting to keep them sleeping on the ground?

This is where you see the bare-knuckles of European Union (EU) immigration policy, racist & xenophobic up to its eyeballs. The EU is making a mockery of international law & exposing it as nothing but unenforceable sentimentality. And not for the first time. The duty to give sanctuary should not have to be embedded in law but when it is, it ought to be respected. Under neoliberalism, those humanitarian laws are rendered useless. That’s what political solidarity is all about: enforcing through massive political & international pressure the right of human beings fleeing war, occupation, bombing, plunder, poverty to be given sanctuary.

This family is part of the group in Ventimiglia, Italy refusing to budge & go back to a place that doesn’t want them, where politicians are whipping up hatred against them, & where they’re denied even a place on a cement floor.

Our fullest solidarity with them.

(Photo by Jean Christophe Magnenet/AFP/Getty Images)

We should take a moment to honor the millions of immigrants & refugees now on a forced march from neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, & commit ourselves to standing up for immigrant rights as human rights. We (still) have the political power to act on their behalf since they’re being denied all rights & sanctuary. We are guided by the iron law of social transformation that “an injury to one of our brothers or sisters is an injury to all of us.”

This fellow is sleeping rough in Ventimiglia, at the border between Italy & France. For the past four days there’s been a stand-off between a group of about 200 African refugees (including women & children) & the French border police. With admirable defiance, the exhausted, beleaguered refugees are refusing to leave the border until they are admitted to France & can continue their journey north to live & work.

Our deepest respect for the toughness of the human spirit in the worst of situations & our fullest solidarity. Godspeed on their journey.

Immigration is a human right. Open the damn border.

(Photo by Massimo Pinca/AP)

Thirty to forty-percent cuts in Greek pensions? Seniors on public bread lines? No health care for children? And the IMF is bleeding the country for a debt payment in two weeks? Guess SYRIZA wasn’t the answer. Maybe capitalism doesn’t work even on paper.

This is a situation fraught with the ugliest ironies of neoliberal militarism. This young man is carrying a sick woman off a ship docked in a Somali port fleeing the Saudi-led (& US-backed) war against Yemen.

The Yemen border with Saudi Arabia is usually the site of a massive immigration crisis with refugees from US war & bombing in Somalia along with other refugees from Ethiopia & Eritrea sleeping in the rough & trying to enter Saudi Arabia for work. Saudi Arabia has built a barrier wall there & the Yemen military help deter immigration.
Now, under a siege of massive Saudi bombing, refugees from Yemen are fleeing to another US-war zone in Somalia where they may find temporary respite from misery–likely sleeping in the rough.

It’s a gruesome scenario. How many cruelties can some people endure? And others be allowed to impose? You can blither on about the problems with the Houthis & Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. But the political problems of Yemen are for the people of Yemen to resolve. As we saw in the massive & impressive Arab uprising in Yemen, many of them have strong ideas about what is needed & all of their ideas begin & end with democracy. None of them include US intervention or Saudi Arabian bombing. And the same is true in Somalia & every other country. The people of the US & Saudi Arabia aren’t that fond of their own regimes & can’t for the life figure out why a half-baked feudal monarchy & a militarist war machine think they have the right to bomb “democracy” (spell that economic & political control) into others.

US & Saudi Arabia out!

(Photo by Abdiqani Hassan/Reuters)

This photo is from yesterday, taken at Akcakale in southeast Turkey on the border with Syria. Syrian refugees are breaking down barbed wire fences to enter Turkey in flight from ISIS thugs & warded off by Turkish water cannons.

We witnessed a similar scenario in the Andaman Sea just a few weeks ago when Rohingya were denied refuge by several countries & then “rescued” by the Myanmar navy & brought back to the site of their violent persecution.

At the time, the Turkish regime announced it was dispatching a navy ship to rescue the Rohingya. Is there any evidence they ever showed up? They also offered aid to Malaysia & Indonesia to build settlement centers for the Rohingya. Was that just big talk too? Because when it comes to humanitarian aid, politicians promise the sky & deliver zip.

Immigration is a human right. But marauding around the planet, tearing it up for purposes of plunder & control, creating massive human dislocation is not a right. It is neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, & human beings have a right & a duty to children to put an end to the barbarism.

(Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)