Many scientists aren’t quite ready to say record flooding on every continent (which at any one time has about a fourth to a third of the planet under deluge) is linked with global warming. Many studies do not find any link between melting Arctic sea ice & extreme weather patterns–or for that matter between massive deforestation & melting polar sea ice. Studies would however find a direct financial link between those scientists still scratching their heads about global warming & the corporations causing it by neoliberal plunder. Science has more than its share of people willing to sing for their supper–nearly as many as the US Congress. If we wait till the water is up around their ankles for these scientists to change their tune, we’ll be facing the Genesis Deluge without an ark.

These floods across Asia, South Asia, Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa have caused catastrophic loss of life, livelihood, & property. This is not a matter of just calling for massive investments in flood & coastal defenses–although it most certainly includes that–but of altering the way neoliberal capitalism does business. They’ve proven they can’t steward the planet without taking us all out so their system is going to have to bite the dust. And time is becoming of the essence.

Right now one of the hardest hit areas is Kashmir & parts of Pakistan (which has been hit with at least five massive floods since 2003). As of September 7th, nearly 200 people in Kashmir & 205 in Pakistan have died in the floods. Several thousand Kashmiri villages have been hit, with 390 submerged under water. Most parts of Srinagar are submerged under 12 feet (3.7 m) of water. So far, 1,300,000 have been rescued, including 87,000 from Srinigar city.

We see the same images we saw during Hurricane Katrina: people standing on rooftops waiting to be rescued, people clinging to ropes & trees so as not to be carried away by flood waters, people fleeing in makeshift rafts. But mostly we see photo after photo of people evacuating seniors, disabled, children, animals. In this photo evacuating residents are holding up a man falling off a tractor trying to get out of Srinigar. One hates to think catastrophes are humanity’s finest moments but they certainly do show the glory human beings are made of.

Flood waters are a toxic brew of chemicals, sewage, & other pollutants & besides causing massive infrastructure damage (including devastation of farm land & livestock), raise the risk of waterborne diseases including typhoid, cholera, giardia, cryptosporidium.

The people of Kashmir are appealing for emergency aid & perhaps FB friends from Kashmir can suggest reliable agencies to contribute.

(Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

What has happened to satire in the age of neoliberal barbarism? Are Stephen Colbert & Jon Stewart the best we can do? Neither provides enough laughs to compensate for the amount of groveling they do before the status quo. They have guests like Paul Bremer (an architect of Iraqi destruction), Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, & others nearly as odious who they never think to challenge but only swap a few jejune quips that even canned laughter doesn’t respond to.

Satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, & ridicule to expose & criticize stupidity, vice, treachery; it shouldn’t be used to kiss ass. If all you want to do is grovel, a few knock-knock jokes will cut it.

Colbert, in the persona of a naive ultraconservative, reduces satire to an amorality play. In 2006, when the world held George W. Bush in utter contempt for war criminality, Colbert hosted his “roasting” at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. After all, the destruction of Iraq & the deaths of hundreds of thousands had to be worth at least a few laughs.

But the most despicable Colbert of all is the one who repeatedly includes Kissinger in skits on “The Colbert Report.” More than once, this international mass murderer has appeared in Colbert videos as an avuncular elder-stateman. Last night, Colbert interviewed him about his new book & referred to him as a “grandpa figure”. A “grandpa figure” responsible for massive bombing, assassinations, torture, coups, & mass murders with a death figure in the millions.

Satire is a wonderful art; sometimes it’s the only thing to take the edge off tragedy & sorrow. To reduce it to amorality & indifference to criminality is unspeakable. And that is why Colbert is no longer even remotely funny but just a parody of his own idiocy.

(Photo is still shot from 2013 video of Colbert dancing in Kiss-ass-inger’s office)

All of the caricatures of Obama emphasize his big ears; none have captured the essence of him which is his Pinocchio nose. So this mug shot-like photo is the most suitable–because he should be on trial in an international tribunal for war crimes against the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, & several other secret military deployments.

His announcement last night was chock full of lies (he does his tutor, Kiss-ass-inger proud) but clearly the Pentagon intends to escalate war against Iraq using massive bombing & now incorporates Syria into their military program. Nothing could be more alarming. They are not introducing troops (at least for now & only covertly) because they want to undercut antiwar opposition.

He emphasized in his pack of lies that this is a “coalition” effort–which means he has the collusion of European & other bellicose nations in this aggression. This is a turning point in military escalation; this is another escalation in barbarism of the kind we just witnessed in Gaza. It is also a call to arms for men & women of good will to stand defiant against this onslaught.

Many are confused & believe the Pentagon will liberate the Syrian revolution from Assad. Just like the US liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein? And Afghanistan from the Taliban? When the Pentagon & its allies are through with Iraq & Syria there will be only rubble, not revolution against tyranny.

Antiwar rallies will be called around the world. Grab a placard & join the international chorus demanding “No War in Iraq!” “No War in Syria!” “US-NATO out of Afghanistan!”

(Photo of Obama from 2012 campaign–intended to be flattering–by Terry Richardson)

In this photo taken in Banjol, Liberia, neighbors of an Ebola victim watch medical workers carry away his body. There’s a lot of emotions written in their faces–from confusion to anxiety to defiance–& then there is the stench of death. Whole neighborhoods have been put under military lock-down but we see photos of crowds gathering within a few feet while workers suited in protective gear spray down the bodies of those who dropped dead in the road.

Media commenters express incredulity that Liberians are so distrustful of government & health officials & are rebelling against the forced quarantines. But what’s new about that? More importantly, what’s foolish about that given the racism of public health programs–especially those administered by US agencies? Well-heeled white parents in the US don’t trust ingredients in vaccinations & parents in Pakistan are refusing polio shots because they suspect nefarious CIA involvement. Women in many countries have every reason to distrust population control programs where forced sterilization is part of the package–or don’t those commenters know the score? The Gates Foundation is criticized in many countries, including Lesotho, because they undermine primary healthcare to dish out vaccinations to people weak from hunger whose systems can hardly withstand exogenous drugs in place of food.

The reported costs of fighting the Ebola epidemic continue to rise from $70 million several weeks ago to now $600 million. US & European officials announced they would commit $250 million. The Gates Foundation, who have given billions ostensibly to fight malaria & polio in African countries, gave a measly $1 million last month to UNICEF to fight Ebola. Curious because four years ago, Gates gave Liberia a $5 million grant for a recycling & garbage pick-up program. Just hours ago he raised Ebola aid to $50 million. Gates’s Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen gave $2.8 million to the American Red Cross last month to fight Ebola & donated another $100,000 to a matching fund. The problem is US health officials admit none of those funds have arrived in West Africa yet. The always thieving American Red Cross admits to dispersing only $100,000 & that for computer systems, not health services–which explains why people are dropping dead in the roads & in their homes & are not being cared for in hospitals.

Financial media–always the ones to put first things first–are concerned that quarantines are delaying mining projects & slowing rubber & palm oil output in Liberia, as well as cocoa, peanut, & rice production in Sierra Leone. The African Union objects to the border closures, flight bans & mass quarantines in West African countries. They claim they can’t send in more health workers because there isn’t enough protective gear & flight bans are making it difficult to get the protective suits. All that dough & they can’t figure out how to deliver gear after several weeks of epidemic. Meanwhile, according to a US health official, the Ebola epidemic is now “completely out of control.”

What’s also out of control is neoliberal plunder which extracts immense wealth from these countries & drives down the standard of living so that people get sick because they cannot afford food, much less healthcare. In many ways, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is a replay of the cholera outbreak caused by UN troops in Haiti in 2010. They share all the same elements: corrupt regimes, neoliberal plunder, racism, treating human beings as dispensable.

Those of us who live in the plundering countries regret more than anything we have not yet sufficient political strength to stay the hand of plunder. It is our commitment to change that.

(Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)

Meet the “terrorists” of Guatemala: Most of us were raised to believe Indigenous peoples were vanquished peoples–segregated & forced to hole up in reservations & backwaters on their way to extinction. Natural history museums were places we could gawk at pastiches of their pastoral but “primitive” lives sanitized of the violent colonial campaigns to exterminate them. In the US, a certain romanticism developed around having “Indian” ancestry (not too much, just a little) & sports teams & military systems were named after them. Demeaning was part of rendering them extinct.

It’s when neoliberal plunder came up against the remaining land rights of Indigenous peoples on every single continent that the world realized not only were they not on the brink of extinction, but they were in the front lines of the struggle for democratic rights & against environmental destruction causing climate change–from the anti-fracking movement in Canada & the US to opposing mining operations & agribusiness plantations in Africa, Latin & Central America, South Asia, Australia.

In 2004, Goldcorp, a Canadian mining corporation from Vancouver, BC opened up the Marlin gold & silver mine consisting of two open pits & one underground facility in the highlands of western Guatemala. The Mam & Sipakapa Mayan nations living on the two extremities of the mine protested they had not been consulted before work began on the pit (as required by Guatemalan & international law) & that their land was simply expropriated by the government for Goldcorp. The Sipakapa nation filed a formal legal complaint with the World Bank. But of course, most of the billions of dollars worth of mining investments around the world are orchestrated by the IMF & bankrolled by World Bank loans. The Marlin mine got a US $45 million loan as part of the neoliberal “push to develop the natural resources sector across Latin America.” The World Bank concluded the Sipakapa complaint had no merit. The fox guarding the chicken coop writ large–or more aptly, made parody.

The Mam & Sipakapa nations are also protesting ecological & epidemiological problems from the mine. Gold & silver are extracted using explosives & processed using cyanide leaching. The local residents engage in subsistence farming of corn, beans, vegetables, & fruits irrigated by the local river & its tributaries. Activists claim the mine has contaminated water sources they use to irrigate their crops & for human & livestock consumption with arsenic & copper effluvia. They also say the subterranean mining explosions have caused houses to collapse. Although Goldcorp & the government are playing fast & loose with the equivocal conclusions of a two-week ecological study commissioned by the Catholic archdiocese in 2009, residents point to skin & neurological diseases as evidence of heavy metal poisoning. But you don’t have to do one more redundant study to verify what has been known for decades about the efflux contamination of mining operations. Cyanide leaching is common practice in mining facilities & mining officials damn well know the problems.

This Mayan woman is “Doña Crisanta”, a leader of the anti-mining movement in San Miguel Ixtahuacán. Anti-mining activists are called terrorists & enemies of progress by the Guatemalan government who, in cahoots with mining company goon squads, employ assassination, incarceration, intimidation, criminalization, & mass rape against them.

Guatemala’s president Otto Pérez, who served as a general in the 30-year civil war which massacred 200,000 Mayans, attends the inaugurations of new mines in all parts of the country despite protests by local Indigenous nations against the crimes of mining company goon squads. He’s also making sure fellow general & former dictator Efrain Rios Montt eludes justice for the charge of Mayan genocide. Otto Pérez is another punk who’s gonna have to bite the dust.

Our fullest solidarity with the “terrorists” of Guatemala.

(Photo of “Doña Crisanta” by Peter Guest/Newsweek)

Images from the Zionist Armageddon in Gaza: it really is an end time battle between justice & tyranny because Israel really did go too far this time. It’s been riding so high for so long on Exodus mythology that Netan-psycho-yahu didn’t realize there would be a day of reckoning–just like the Bible says even if you don’t read it or think it’s a historic work. Netan-psycho, driven by racism & irrepressible political & economic pressures within Israel, presided over the beginning of the end for Zionism.

This young boy sleeping in the rubble of his destroyed house is surrounded by devastation. Palestinians took a tremendous beating. It should be pointed out it’s likely there are people entombed in that rubble which is going to sit there for a long time while Israel continues war by means of blockade. But Palestinians no longer stand alone–& that will make all the difference.

There is no counterposition between protest rallies & building the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS). The point of it all is to educate, agitate, organize to defend Palestinian justice, demand Israel lift the economic blockade of Gaza, & demand governments end military aid to Israel. For the irredeemable knuckleheads who continue (after Operation Ethnic Cleansing) to oppose BDS because it will hurt Israeli workers, there is only one question (make it two): How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history? How does it feel to stand with apartheid & genocide?

For those who believe in justice, there is only one side: that of Palestinians against racism & colonialism. There is no middle ground.

(Photo by Ahmed Hjazy/Pacific Press/Barcroft Media)

After surviving 50 days of apocalyptic destruction, the people of Gaza must be struggling to regain equilibrium while grieving loss, dealing with homelessness, being without power & sanitation. Celebrating survival has so many heavy provisos, including the continuing Israeli blockade of Gaza–so it is lovely to see children out & about at the beach again & this man playing with his baby (12 days after Israel’s ceasefire) without fear of being bombed.

Those who witnessed the gruesome & barbarous assault on Gaza need also take a deep breath before plunging into building the economic boycott (BDS) of all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729) with rallies, teach-ins, speak-outs, forums. It’s a whole new world for Palestinian solidarity which is now international & massive. Israel & its Zionist supporters are trying furiously to clean up their new image problem; the Exodus mythology, so carefully constructed for 66 years, was blown to shreds by their bombs. Israel is no longer viewed as a righteous, beleaguered nation beset by terrorists but a monstrous military machine that mows down Palestinian children, claiming they’re going after Hamas rocket nests.

Regrettably, the way Zionists are dealing with their image problem is with racism & increased Islamophobia that exposes the supremacist & colonial ideology at the heart of Zionism. Islam & Arabs are the new boogeymen we’re supposed to be afraid of or they’ll eat our children–just like “commies” of the McCarthy era put fluoride in the water to corrupt the morals of youth. If this crap isn’t opposed in the boldest & most steadfast way, we will wind up in another era of repression with free speech as the first casualty. The fight for Palestinian justice is an essential part of the fight for democracy around the world.

(Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

At the sight of these two odious creatures, invidious animal comparisons leap to mind–from bovine to serpentine to reptilian. And the animals rise up in a chorus of rebellion. So we leave their physiognomy to speak for itself & for lives spent in service to vanity & all that’s ugly in this world.

Clinton is signaling here to all those corporate & political forces Kissinger serves so well, so shamefully, & so murderously that she too will bend her knee to their service if they reward her with false honors of the kind he racks up. Depravity worked for Kiss-ass-inger; she hopes it will work for her too.

In the 1950s, the ruling elite took a nonentity at Harvard who was full of himself & could wing an IQ test, an unscrupulous, devious, cynic wedded to no ideology except self-aggrandizement & they turned him into a minion extraordinaire, a courtier to power. All they had to do was stroke his vanity which is his guiding light.

Since his student days he’s been known for a certain way of operating: flattering & sniveling deference to authority figures but abusive, vindictive, manipulative, deceitful with those he deems subordinates. Many of his biographers claim he intellectually towers over all others but when you read their panegyrics you see they’re in no position to judge.

Idealism is no part of his nature & this he considers intellectual freedom because he has no conscience to answer to. He’s been a windbag since his first attempt at authorship writing his dissertation. None of his books come in under 400 pages; his two volumes of biography come in at just under 2,500 pages–& there probably isn’t more than a couple truths in the entirety.

He has a new book coming out–probably another ten-pounder–on the new world order. He was one of the political architects of the Washington Consensus, the neoliberal approach to plunder orchestrated by the World Bank, IMF, & Pentagon. Global economic plunder is ramming against the parameters of the nation-state & they haven’t a clue how to deal with it because for all their feigned intellectualism, they don’t want to face that capitalism has entered its barbaric phase & is whirling out of control.

Joshua Cooper Ramo is a chief officer & partner in Kissinger Associates, the secretive consulting firm owned by Henry whose clients include some of the largest corporations & investors in the world. Ramo, who coordinates investment in China, wrote “The Beijing Consensus”, a ‘wither China’-type article elaborating the Chinese economic model as an alternative to the Washington Consensus. Liberal critics claimed Ramo ignored that degraded labor, including child labor, was the core of China’s economic success when that was probably what most appealed to him.

A few years ago Ramo authored another book described as “provocative” by reviewers who couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about. Not to worry! He wasn’t talking about much. His book is called “The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us & What We Can Do About It”. He suggests that Henry’s generation ran the world according to outdated idées fixes & methods when what is needed in the era of globalization is the pragmatism, flexibility, & resilience of hedge fund managers & Hezbollah operatives. (If the profundity escapes you, you’re not alone.)

Trendy thinking isn’t Henry’s style. He prefers the turgid rather than glib broad-spectrum theorizing. The teaser to his book circulating now in the media is just chock-full of imponderables. His new book is likely an attempt to show he hasn’t lost it as Ramo claims. Now if there’s one thing Henry knows, it’s how the system works–or rather how to work the system. For all his vaunted brilliance, Henry failed in many of his negotiating strategies (Le Duc Tho who negotiated for North Vietnam made chopped liver out of him & refused to accept the Nobel Peace Prize with him in 1973) & relied solely on deceit, maneuvers, assassinations, intrigues, treacheries, & above all the persuasive power of bombs & mass murder. If countries didn’t bow graciously to bribery & plunder, he just bombed them into smithereens or overthrew their governments. Which raises the question, if he’s so damn smart how come he relied primarily on brute force? His international rap sheet for war & human rights crimes is a mile long & touches every continent: Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, Cambodia, Laos, Nigeria, Angola, Argentina, Palestine.

Henry, & likely Ramo too, know how the system works but they can’t control it & most importantly they can’t expose it–if they want to keep working it. So they talk gibberish & gobbledy-gook which they feed to gullible undergraduates to make it appear capitalism is inspired & democratic rather than out-of-control plunder that is bringing down the planet & making the lives of millions a hell on earth.

And that’s what Hillary wants in on. That’s why she’s putting her gnarly arm around his grotesque head. And she is what they call “the lesser of two evils”?

(Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

It’s been so long since the last major union battles in the US that most of us don’t remember them–even if we went through them. In 1981, then president Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers & banned them forever from federal service. His intervention to bust the union signalled a turning point in US labor history which wasn’t in the most dynamic state to begin with coming out of the Cold War.

In 1985, the state of Minnesota intervened with the National Guard to bust the Hormel meatpacker’s union in Austin, MN after a six month strike over cutting wages & dangerous working conditions. Those two strikes were a double whammy against labor militancy & both exposed the collusion of top union officials with union busting. So it’s no wonder that in the past nearly 30 years organized labor has acted more like a whipped puppy than the strongest section of the labor force. There’s a retrenchment within unions with officials talking tough, making deals, & standing steadfast against militant action in defense of safety, wages, benefits. Officials only get off their lard-asses to campaign for Democratic candidates like Elizabeth Warren. And if Hillary Clinton is the candidate for president, they will vigorously (as vigorously as a lard-ass can) campaign for her, claiming she is on the side of labor.

For those who’ve witnessed & been part of this process of decay, the emergence of fast food workers on the scene is a phenomenon of the greatest excitement & importance. It’s a gust of wind in the oxygen-free zone of the labor movement where there has been no serious labor organizing for decades. The percentage of US unionized workers is down to 11%, leaving most working people no way to fight for safety or wages or rights on the job. And employers have taken full advantage of this vulnerability. Working people have to eat crow in order to earn a living.

Fast food jobs were once considered “entry-level” jobs for people just out of high school as if that designation justified low wages, no benefits, & no rights whatsoever. It’s no longer just young people working these restaurants but seniors who can’t survive on social security alone & family people with kids to feed.

Union officials, still in cahoots with the union-busters, are already looking for ways to derail this new movement among fast food workers & get them into a “respectable” union that can sit on their militancy. Things are changing in this country & that con job may not be so easy to pull off anymore.

These McDonald’s workers in South Los Angeles are demanding $15 an hour & the right to form unions. Our fullest solidarity with their struggle.

(Photo by Bob Chamberlin/LA Times)

Joan Rivers has finally died. Hollywood Rests in Peace. She became very rich tearing people apart. It’s one thing to go after movie stars for fashion faux pas; it’s quite another to call for genocide in Gaza & justify it saying only those with the lowest IQs were being killed. This kind of talk doesn’t just skirt the edges of fascist-type thinking but plunges right in & wallows.

She represented a genre on TV including Howard Stern & Simon Cowell where demeaning others, especially women & vulnerable, was considered high hilarity. If you were fat or short or disabled or not surgically altered to perfection, she made you a butt of the cruelest jokes–& that includes a lot of us. Only those laughed who consider humiliation & cruelty a form of humor–the very type who’d make good concentration camp guards.

Comments from FB friends on the thread about Rivers last week clarified why she might have been so cruel toward others but there were no excuses offered for why she used humor to incite social hatred & intolerance. Most of us can’t honestly say we’ll miss her or regret her passing. But may she RIP anyway.