Today I received a lovely note from a Facebook friend who said he appreciated my posts but finished reading “every piece with gripping sadness.” It isn’t my intent to add to the quotient of human sadness in the world; it’s hard enough to live. But it is my intent to create not just discomfort–& certainly not guilt–but indignation over how human beings are treated in this world. How can we commit to changing things if we don’t know exactly what’s going on?

American socialization teaches us we are the only truly civilized people in the world, the only ones who matter & puts us at odds with other people. I’m steeped in the gestalt of the 60s generation who could not/cannot live with such provincial horizons. That’s why so many seniors remain the backbone of social protest around the world.

There’s a wonderful quote from Terence, the Roman writer, which several writers have modified & used, including Marx & Tennessee Williams. I modified Williams’ version from Night of the Iguana: “Nothing human is alien to us, except violence & cruelty.” You can’t identify with such a high-flown statement without telling the truth about that which is alien to us.

And that’s why I’m the bearer of sad news.

This is 60-year-old Anna Kousoula, a pensioner who lives just outside Athens. Her pension is 300 euros (US $328) & on this she also supports her son who has been unemployed for over four years. Here she’s complaining about her empty refrigerator since due to bank freezes she’s unable to withdraw her pension. We can see she doesn’t live in splendor because a one bedroom apartment plus utilities costs nearly 100 euros more than her pension; just a gallon of milk is 4.60 euros. She can’t drink away her misery because a bottle of wine is 5.00 euros–in the oldest wine-producing region in the world.

It cannot be said capitalism is hanging by a thread but it is in massive, global crisis. How do you maintain oligarchic rule, balance competing economies, negotiate irreconcilable differences, & maintain your own privileges & wealth when protest is erupting everywhere, challenging your ability & right to rule? That’s where repression comes in, with police forces using tanks, assault weapons, tear gas against unarmed protesters. Popular democracy, ushered in with the great democratic revolutions that overthrew feudalism, has now become completely at odds with neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

The system may not be hanging by a thread but a sign of its panic & lack of options is that they’re trying to resolve the crises with bank maneuvers, hustling money from one country & one bank to another to prevent bankruptcy & collapse. Most importantly, they’re trying to resolve it on the backs of working people, especially seniors & young workers.

Why should pensioners like Anna Kousoula, who lives at a deficit, be asked to bail out the banks? Because as we know from the US bank bailout (under lesser-evil Obama), bankers & oligarchs made a bundle in that operation while millions of homeowners were repossessed.

There’s something fundamentally, fatally flawed with the system & whether or not we all agree it should be dumped, we can agree that working people should not have to bear the brunt of its problems or bail out the banks at our expense.

Our fullest solidarity with Greek working people (we feel no such thing with Greek bankers) because the more you can push back against predation, the stronger we will be when they come for us. “An injury to one is an injury to all” remains the iron law of social transformation.

(Photo by Yannis Kolesidis/EPA)

These are refugees on the Macedonian-Greek border where they will try to catch a train to Serbia & move on to northern European countries if they are able to traverse the razor wire fence put up by Hungary at the Serbian border. Thousands of refugees are trekking through the Balkans. Military & covert operations & economic plunder by the US & European regimes in league with reactionary regimes have completely undone several countries in the Middle East & Africa (& the Americas) & created one of the most colossal breakdowns & refugee crises since WWII.

According to Amnesty International estimates, the number of refugees apprehended trying to cross the Serbia-Hungary border increased from 2,370 in 2010 to 60,602 this year. Apprehended & not allowed to move on because Hungary (an EU member) is now functioning as proxy EU immigration control in the way Greece did before SYRIZA (& in the way Greece is certain to again under Troika austerity). The Hungarian parliament recently passed legislation tightening asylum rules. Those able to enter Hungary are abused by authorities, arrested & placed in overcrowded squalid conditions.

Their treatment in Macedonia & Serbia is not better. In fact, Amnesty accuses the Balkan regimes of abusing refugees passing through their territories in a replay of what Central American refugees face passing through Mexico: extortion & assault by both police authorities & criminal gangs. Last month Serbian authorities arrested 29 police officers & nine customs officials for accepting bribes to let refugees pass into Hungary. What likely rankled the regime was not the extortion & corruption but allowing refugees safe passage.

Refugees report being pushed, slapped, kicked, & beaten by Serbian police near the Hungarian border. An Afghan refugee told Amnesty they witnessed a pregnant woman being beaten. They are also arrested without legal recourse or the possibility of asylum in either country. Serbia gave refugee status to one person in 2014 & Macedonia to only ten. One Amnesty official called the Balkans a “no-man’s land” for refugees. And you can bet your bottom dollar both regimes are operating in league with the EU from which they derive no benefits.

Immigration is a human right–a right writ large in human history. Open the damn borders!

(Photo by Robert Atanasovski/AFP/Getty)

There’s little to say about Sinead O’Connor’s unsavory attack on Kim Kardashian. Her vile, misogynist choice of language is regrettable. Her analysis that Rolling Stone killed music misses the entire point of profiteering in music. Is it inappropriate to bring up that she nearly played apartheid Israel for a massive, inflated fee & was quite belligerent in her cancellation?

The runner-up in Donald Trump’s Miss USA pageant was Miss Texas, a woman of Mexican ancestry from here in McAllen. She arrived home today to media applause for ignoring all that conflict around Trump. There’s big money in those pageants; that’s how they convince many women to participate in them. One could ask of this young woman, what price dignity!? But it must be said, most Americans are far removed from their immigrant ancestors & don’t identify in solidarity or insult.