Deportations of the undocumented increased dramatically under his regime, dwarfing all previous regimes, including Bush. That’s an ignominy & one that forced thousands of children into the US foster care system which is already in a shambles & a disgrace to child welfare.

According to immigration officials, between 7,000 & 8,000 unaccompanied children were taken in by the US Department of Health & Human Services every year after being detained crossing the border. In 2014, that figure was 70,000 unaccompanied children–& 60,000 more with one or more parents. There weren’t enough facilities to house the children & process them to reunite them with families already here or provide families to take them in. In one instance federal officials put children in an abandoned air force base in Texas. Mostly they were stuck in prisons without beds or minimal sanitary conditions.

On July 24th, a federal court chastised the Obama regime for this & ordered the release of 1,700 children from three facilities in the next 90 days. There are so many problems with this ruling. Of course they should be released from squalid prisons where they should not have been put in the first place. But then what!? You can’t just release children to the streets. They have to be provided for. If there are no provisions in the ruling for social workers, families to live with, officials to process their papers & reunite them with families, the Obama regime will simply deport them.

Which brings us to the next problem. What happened to the other nearly 68,000 kids detained by border patrol last year? Were they let go to find their way in life, simply putting small children on the street to be preyed on? Were they deported? Are there other prisons for kids not covered by the federal ruling? You don’t just disappear 68,000 kids without an explanation.

Not long ago, a couple of Texas politicians proposed deporting the children & publicly suggested the kids were operatives in drug trafficking & prostitution. One was a Democrat & the other a Republican. So much for that lesser-evil crap.

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders. Provide sanctuary & support to undocumented children. Enough with the neoliberal barbarism of the Obama regime!

Photo is detention facility for children in Texas.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Now we all know full well why he wouldn’t want wind anywhere near that coif of his but the main objections he voiced were aesthetic & xenophobic: wind turbines he pouted, are “horrendous”, “monsters”, & made in China. He responded to questions in the bullying & omniscient style for which he is regrettably known since he certainly isn’t known for his intelligence, wit, or insight. (We understand he watches Charlton Heston reruns to channel Moses but only comes off like a schoolyard bully.)

It’s difficult to make politicians look intelligent but in contrast to our man, the Scottish ministers disported themselves splendidly & must have had a barrel of laughs doing it. When asked what evidence he had to prove his assertion that wind farms destroyed tourism, he responded, “I am the evidence”, & when told that most Scots polled favored wind farms, he answered no one knows more about polls than him, that he knows more about the effects of turbines than any expert, & that he’s also an expert on tourism with “many, many awards” to his name (probably from tourist boards & chambers of commerce hoping to snare his bucks).

Trump claims he had a sweetheart deal with a Scottish politician who he’s now had a falling out with–testifying at once to the corruption & good sense of that politician. He ended his vituperations threatening to pull out of the deal & move his operation to Ireland if the Scottish Parliament doesn’t get cowed by his wrath. (Ireland, you better hope our man gets his way or you’ll have to contend with all this too.)

Two groups of protestors greeted Trump outside the Parliament: the first was assembled entrepreneurs hoping for concessions at the golf resort. The other were environmentalists holding up this effigy & a sign saying, “Scotland wants wind-power, NOT an old wind bag.”

(Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell)

There have been for a long while serious attacks on the women’s movement. Some belittle the movement because they have not sufficiently studied the history & have relied on media misrepresentations. From the very first emergence of feminism, media lied, distorted, vilified feminists. Some of the media lies & distortions include that the movement was white, middle-class, racist, “sex-negative,” homophobic, exclusionary, & pro-war. When the movement first began, media portrayed it as lesbians, man-haters, & spinsters too ugly to get a man.

Others deride the movement to support their opposition to identity politics–that is, because they resent when the oppressed stand up with independent power against their oppressor. Political power that is not controlled or shamed terrifies many people. A political analog is the vilification of Black Lives Matter.

Many just want to destroy feminism, however they can do that, because their hatred of women & women’s political & social power intimidates them. Now the feminist pioneers are belittled as TERFs & SWERFs & blue-nosed lily-white haters. That’s misogyny & ignorance talking–not the historic record. And what’s most offensive about it is that it completely eliminates Black, Latina, & lesbian women from the history of feminism–of which they were a central part.

For anyone who was part of that movement from the late 1960s to its decline in the mid-1970s, it was a glorious experience of women learning from each other about our oppression, of overcoming the competitive we were indoctrinated with toward each other, of standing together in a political anthem of defiance.

In 1970 I moved from Minneapolis to NYC to become part of the women’s movement & was publicity coordinator on the August 26th march. We were arrested twice, once while wallpapering the Playboy club with posters advertising the march.

These are two brief recordings of an interview done with me during an organizing meeting. It was a proud moment in my political life & I’m reposting on the 45th anniversary of that march which set off the women’s liberation movement.

http://www.wnyc.org/…/87675-celebrating-international-wome…/

Photo is front line of march.

According to the Maduro regime, the purpose of martial law & mass deportations is to stop Colombian residents along the border from trafficking goods subsidized by Venezuela–like baby formula, rice, & gasoline–to Colombia where they are sold at jacked-up prices for a profit. Are we expected to believe this is all about profiteering from baby formula!?

Sounding like no one quite so much as Donald Trump, president Maduro said on TV: “Who comes over from Colombia? It’s people practically without education. I’m not offending Colombia, I’m just telling a truth…from Colombia, all of the poverty & misery is coming over with a people who are escaping for economic needs & fleeing war.” If international law was worth a damn thing in enforcement, our man just hung himself & does not distinguish himself from Frontex & European Union barbarism.

According to Maduro, who appealed for international aid, over 120,000 Colombians have poured into Venezuela this year. So in the meanwhile he’s employing martial law!? The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) isn’t usually much help in these situations but their representative in Colombia did say (last March) that the Maduro regime has the right to “take measures against persons in irregular migratory situations” but “due process has to be offered, with the opportunity to appeal.” He added, that if you say ‘I left Colombia running for my life, because they threatened me’, the Venezuelan government has to stop [the deportation] immediately.” Collective deportations are outlawed by international treaties.

Maduro was elected as a socialist candidate. Kind of in the same way as French president François Hollande who forcibly evicts & deports Roma & assaults refugees on the French-Italian border & at Calais. What’s wrong with that picture!? If you can’t distinguish immigration policy of socialist regimes from neoliberal barbarism, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. And rationalizations don’t cut it.

Immigration is a human right. Open the border.

(Photo by Eliecer Mantilla/AP)

So why are these little girls in a UN school? Are the residents of Susiya too poor to build one?

Israel has been trying since 1986 to evict the entire population of Susiya. They demolished the local mosque to excavate a Jewish synagogue dating back to the sixth century & turned the area into an archaeological & tourist site. They built an Israeli settlement & renamed the place Susya as part of their fraudulent claim to the village.

Since 1986, the people of Susiya have been evicted three times under orders of the Israeli Supreme Court. Their solid-frame homes were taken out by bulldozers & they are forced to live on their farmlands in makeshift dwellings like those in this photo. Israel is trying to drive them out of the area so it can link the archaeological & tourist site to the settlement.

You can’t tell that whole story in one caption but you can do better than make this look like a simple back-to-school story in the West Bank.

Build the economic, cultural, & economic boycott of Israel. Demand an end to military aid to Israel. And like & share this page as part of the campaign to support the people of Susiya against dispossession by Israeli settlers:https://www.facebook.com/StandWithSusiya?fref=ts

(Photo by Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)

The classified plan approved by EU member states was released by WikiLeaks in May. Triton was to be deployed against refugee transport networks & infrastructure, including the destruction of docked boats, interdiction & confiscation of en route boats, & operations within Libyan territory.

The UN mandate for Triton requested by the EU was tabled because association with such an open-ended military operation was getting hairy for the UN. Any military operation against a small number of boat owners & traffickers would really be directed against the refugees–to stop their movement, including just getting on the boats, which would likely entail death & injury to many.

The scope of the maritime mandate was also undefined–signifying not uncertainty about what Frontex intended to do in the open seas but that it wasn’t sure what it could get away with without condemnation. After all, you can’t just torpedo dinghies with children, elderly, infirm, & pregnant women on board in the middle of a sea.

After five months of Triton, there is almost no word on what 26 European navies are doing in the Mediterranean with their warships. What we are seeing reported is images like this one–of rescue workers, usually from the same Irish navy vessel, holding infants & small children rescued from mid-sea. We were told yesterday the Italian coast guard claims it coordinated the rescue of 4,400 refugees in a single day.

Has Triton changed its mission from military to search & rescue? Or are we being played here? Are we being fed a bill of goods about what is really going on? Because as we know from the Greek-Macedonia border, Frontex has no intention of allowing sanctuary to tens of thousands of refugees & immigrants.

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Carmelo Imbesi/AP)