Evil fairies may have taken over earth in our sleep

Palestinian stone-throwers

Some days you read the news you think evil fairies took over the planet. Or maybe you just hope that’s what happened:

Saudi Arabia was chosen to head a UN human rights panel;

Ben Carson thinks Darwin came up with the theory of evolution because he was influenced by Satan;

Israel says a Palestinian teen was killed when a grenade he was going to throw at Israeli soldiers exploded in his hands;

A Zionist site says Gandhi & Martin Luther King, Jr. never threw rocks so when media doesn’t condemn Palestinian stone-throwers they’re whitewashing Palestinian violence. Even worse, the media source they blast is the NY Times–a stronger lying-assed ally Israel has never had.

Is it any wonder the kids do drugs & the rest of us are considering it?

(Photo of Palestinians lobbing stones so as not to be accused of whitewashing)

Let me rain on the Pope’s parade

Pope & Obama (Andrew Harnik:AP) Sept 23 2015

No one wants to be the one to rain on the Pope’s parade but preaching to regimes about poverty & climate change is not the same as holding them to criminal account. In many ways, he’s the Bernie Sanders of Catholicism.

We all appreciate a good homily against poverty but you have to take it from abstract to concrete & that’s where you find the devil lurking in the details. A monumental share of poverty in the world falls heaviest on women & children. If women cannot control their own reproductive lives, the poverty becomes even more devastating.

When Pope Francis toured the Philippines last January, he focused much of his preaching against Filipino legislation providing free family planning services & voicing his opposition to birth control. On the plane returning to Rome he told reporters ““Some think, excuse me if I use the word, that in order to be good Catholics, we have to be like rabbits, but no.” What the hell did that mean? Was he proposing abstinence instead of birth control?

Tomorrow he addresses the US Congress–a group which includes some of the most backward & misogynist halfwits on the planet when it comes to reproductive rights. They are presently debating whether to cut off funds to Planned Parenthood (PP), the biggest provider of birth control in the country. Will Pope Francis intervene against PP as he did against family planning clinics in the Philippines? And are women supposed to clam up our protests if he does just because he talks a good game about climate change? We think not.

We appreciate his counsel on poverty & climate change–though of course he’s talking to the wrong people for a solution. But we will not appreciate, nor will we hold our tongues, if he campaigns against PP & birth control in this country. Those would be fighting words because one of the greatest problems for poor & working women is the lack of access to reproductive freedom.

Don’t ask women to put aside our rights in deference to the Pope. It’s time the Catholic Church recognized women as human beings. There’s no negotiating on that & even ardent Catholics think that.

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP)

Election campaign shows crisis of leadership in U.S. capitalism

Hillary Clinton just came out against the Keystone XL pipeline as part of her program (i.e., campaign rhetoric) to fight climate change. It likely isn’t Sanders pushing her to the left because at least (& only) rhetorically she is further to the left than he is—most notably, on immigration.

She’s behind him in the polls but what’s driving her left rhetoric is the prospect of millionaire donors abandoning her for Biden if he runs. She’s Wall Street’s choice for now but her corruption is catching up with her & the people who really control who runs don’t want that trailing her into the White House.

If the hapless Biden is capitalism’s ‘deus ex machina’ in this campaign, it can be said without a moment’s hesitation there is a crisis of leadership in US capitalism. And not for the first time.

Saudi war crimes in Yemen

Sanaa, Yemen rubble (Hani Mohammed:AP) Sept 23 2015

On the same day tens of thousands protested in Sanaa, Yemen, against the Saudi-led bombing (now in its sixth month), others like this woman in Sanaa were searching the rubble of their bombed-out homes for survivors.

The Saudi-led, US-armed coalition includes the monarchies of Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco; Egypt, a military dictatorship; & Sudan, a country repeatedly condemned by the US & UN for genocide in Darfur & for slavery.

Human rights groups accuse the coalition of “potential war crimes” but hedging the accusation with that “potential” (just like they did in Gaza) makes a mockery of their commitment. When Saudi war planes are bombing schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods, refugee camps–now for six months–there’s no “potential” thing going on here. When there is evidence Saudis are using cluster bombs, there’s no “potential” thing happening but unmistakeable, verifiable human rights & war crimes.

It doesn’t matter that the US & Saudi Arabia refuse to sign the international treaty banning cluster munitions signed by 116 other countries. It’s still war crimes in international law. One could also say, these are crimes by every standard of human morality, but there is no morality in modern war–only barbarism.

The Yemen uprising of 2011, where women played such a leading role, inspired the world & was forced to retreat. The Saudi bombing is to finish the job off of destroying every vestige of resistance to tyranny & US intervention, which included years of drone bombing allegedly against al-Qaeda.

Our deepest respect to the people of Yemen for standing up midst the bombing & marching in solidarity with Palestinians & in defiance of the military aggression against them.

As we assemble international antiwar forces to commemorate & grieve the 14th year of the war against Afghanistan, we should include placards demanding the end of war against the people of Yemen.
(Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP)

Thousands protest in Yemen against Saudi war & in defense of Palestinians

Yemen 9:21:2015

Only three media sources have reported on this massive protest yesterday in Sanaa, Yemen to condemn both the Zionist aggression against Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem & the Saudi-led bombing aggression against Yemen. The protest was called by the leadership of the Houthi movement.

The purpose of Saudi bombing, which has gone on since late March, is to destroy the popular democratic movement of 2011. This protest would suggest the revolution lives on.

The people of Yemen show the way forward in re-building the international antiwar movement even while their country is being bombed to smithereens.

Our deepest respect & fullest solidarity.

(Photo from almanar.com)

Putin/Russia allies with Netanyahu/Israel in Syria

There’s a proverbial saying that “politics makes strange bedfellows.” So what are we to make of the new military alliance between Putin/Russia & Netanyahu/Israel over Syria? Actually such an alliance speaks for itself & increases the dangers of US & Russian warplanes in the region.

The Palestinian struggle now merges with the international antiwar movement. Nothing is more imperative historically & politically than to re-build that movement demanding no military intervention in Syria & no support to Assad.

Neoliberal capitalism & starvation in Madagascar

Madagascar (EPA:SHIRAAZ MOHAMED) Sept 22 2015

This is a common genre of photojournalism for Africa: a malnourished, clearly unhealthy little girl which NGOs will use to pity-monger & exploit to raise funds. Her name is Francine Sevasao & she lives in Madagascar, an island country off the coast of East Africa. We’re told Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world & that the southern part of the island is now sustaining a severe food shortage effecting at least 200,000 people, including 40,000 children under the age of five.

Upon investigation we learn that 80 percent earn their living in agriculture & that 90 percent of the 22 million Malagasy live under USD $2.00 a day. Quite frankly, if 90 percent are living under $2.00 a day, compared to the cost of living a whole lot more than 200,000 people are hungry in Madagascar. Nearly 20 million more.

The top agricultural products produced in the country include rice, beans, cereals & other starchy foods like maize, potato, cassava, numerous kinds of fruits & vegetables, coffee, tea, cacao, sugar, pepper, vanilla, cloves, honey. According to the government’s promotional literature, about 3.6 million tons of rice & one million tons of cereals & starchy foods are produced annually. They also have considerable livestock breeding of cattle, sheep, goats, swine, ducks, & chickens. The ocean surrounding Madagascar in rich in fish, shellfish, crustaceans. So why in the hell are so many people starving?

You can probably see the problem coming like a Mack truck. Since the 1980s, the IMF & World Bank have been imposing privatization schemes on the country in exchange for loans, expropriating agriculture & fishing for agribusiness plantations & skewing the economy for export markets.

As a result of IMF interference, there’s a thriving sweatshop industry in the country with child labor & tariff free zones; the tourist industry is going gang-busters with thousands of orphaned children exploited in prostitution; homelessness among city children is rampant.

They don’t explain all that in the media; one has to piece the story together from dozens of reports. But the general matrix of exploitation remains the same across the globe–that is, the pattern of neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

The IMF & World Bank issue country reports on the different economies where precious little can be learned about their methods of turning human beings into slaves. The reports are a collection of pieties & banalities like the January 2015 IMF report that said about Madagascar: “Younger people & large families are on average poorer than older people & small families.” IMF analysts aren’t that stupid but if they write reports about their barbaric practices, there might actually be a revolution somewhere.

This post is not a fund raising appeal but a call to arms. Even if Madagascar’s elite cannot be immediately forced to stop collusion with the IMF & World Bank, what’s to stop them from getting rice & beans from India or some other nearby country? Or what’s to stop them from halting exports of food products until its own people are fed? Nothing but greed.

(Photo by Shiraaz Mohamed/EPA)

African refugees at Calais: an update

African refigees at Calais (Yui Mok:PA) Sept 22  2015

Media coverage of the refugee & immigrant crises is a curious thing. It’s focused now on refugees coming through Eastern Europe & reports almost nothing on those coming from northern African routes through Libya & Morocco or on the crisis at Calais, France.

There has been no coverage of Calais since late July except for a single photo in the Guardian-UK today of a young man giving another a haircut. The caption to that photo read “A man has a haircut at a site dubbed the “New Jungle,” where some 3,000 people have set up camp, many hoping to get to England.” Shouldn’t a respectable liberal newspaper find out who dubbed it the “New Jungle” & call out the arrant racism of that rather than repeat it? And shouldn’t a newspaper in England consider this story top priority when in just the past several months an estimated 37,000 refugees have attempted to cross the Channel Tunnel (50 km/31 mi long) to enter England?

While photos of refugees in Eastern Europe & of rescue operations of Africans in the Mediterranean show many women & small children, photos of African refugees at Calais & at Morocco focus primarily on young men. In fact we know, including from this photo & others at Calais, that women & children are among the refugees & are being subjected to the same police violence as the men. Is an editorial decision governing the coverage to give the racist impression England is being overrun by single Black men? Or is that just paranoia based on experience with the racist British government & the Guardian’s coverage of Palestinians?

African refugees at Calais continue to rush the tunnel in large groups, attempt to hitchhike on trucks & in cars, even attempt to walk the 31 miles. Immigration rights activists in London & Scotland have had huge welcome protests for refugees. There is no reporting of French immigration rights protests. Is this part of the news gray-out or is there in fact little mass opposition to French police violence against refugees?

(Photo of refugees at Calais by Yui Mok/PA)

Trump & the Idiocy Question

Counterpunch published an article titled “Trump & the Islam Question” after he again recently exposed his xenophobia, racism, & utter stupidity in New Hampshire responding to a halfwit in the audience who called out the ‘problem we have in this country called Muslims.’

The article is useful but the author overestimates Trump’s intelligence by claiming Trump adeptly calculates how to ‘play the race card.’ He does!?

Trump is a narcissistic blowhard who doesn’t know a damn thing about anything. And in truth, as president he wouldn’t have to because of all those think tanks. His speeches, even at the debates, are full of bombast & boasts without a shred of political content–except for the grunting, chest-pounding expressions of primitive social hatred for women, immigrants, Blacks, Latinos. (Apologies to gorillas for the invidious comparison.)

Is there any point to take him on about politics? What say we gather & do our own chest-pounding? Nothing scares a hateful intellectual puffball like Trump more than the exercise of political power by the very people he detests as inferior.