There’s something about group photos of kids that just makes the heart sing. These little ones from Kampala look like the Little Rascals of Uganda. Is it the shyness that’s so charming? Or the lack of shyness?

They will always be the most compelling reason to make this world suitable to live & love in; that they may build a life in a world worthy of them.

(Photo from Katende Andrew)

One of the central demands of the women’s movement of the 1970s was for reproductive rights & no forced sterilization. They remain central issues for women. Forced sterilization is a practice derived from eugenics in the late 19th century. Social philosophy doesn’t get more detestable. It was always associated with the power elite & held a lot of cachet for a long time–unless you were an immigrant, working class, disabled, gay, Jewish, Black, Latino, or Indigenous. It was unashamedly promoted all over the world. The social history of its origins should be placed within the context of the great anti-colonial movements of that era leading up to WWI. It’s decline in respectability began with WWII & the Nazi exterminations which were eugenics writ large. But it was the US Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s & the women’s movement that most clearly opposed themselves to such repugnant theoretics & practices.

Eugenics groups favored reproductive rights because they needed legality to promote practices done in secret–like the forced sterilization of thousands of Black, Latina, & Indigenous women. The women’s movement included “no forced sterilization” as a demand precisely to draw a hard line between those who wanted reproductive rights to control women & for racist purpose & feminists who believed in women’s right to control their own bodies. Women would go into clinics for routine procedures & come out sterilized without knowledge or consent. It’s not as if these practices have ended in many countries. Native American women have considerable litigation over forced sterilizations; Israel acknowledges performing it on Ethiopian immigrants; prison inmates in California were sterilized without consent; it’s been rampant in China to enforce the one-child policy. For US population control programs in African countries & India most notably, eugenics & forced sterilization is the guiding principle. Because at the heart of eugenics is the most monstrous, stinking racism.

With the decline of the women’s movement, these population programs are unrestrained & bankrolled by the US & UK, the Gates Foundations, & World Bank. Control of reproduction is central to capitalist domination & feminists have written volumes on this question. But in the neoliberal barbaric phase of capitalism, control of population is their way of managing the crises their policies create. They have no possible solutions to massive poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness–not if they want to continue plundering. So eugenics provides the solution: just bump millions of people off or force them to stop having babies.

How that works out in the world has just been exposed in the most gruesome way in India. In Bilaspur, a city in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, thirteen women given tubectomies in a government-run sterilization camp died & 69 were hospitalized, twenty of them in critical condition. One doctor had operated on 83 women in six hours–about four minutes per woman. In the most predictable ways, the government went into overdrive. It arrested five doctors, including the surgeon. They found the drugs used were contaminated with rat poison & arrested the pharmaceutical manufacturer & his son.

They’re going to be scapegoating up a storm to distract from India’s criminal policies of population control. And not for the first time. Indira Gandhi’s notorious sterilization program in the 1970s sterilized over 8 million men, sometimes with compensation but mostly forced. India now has one of the highest rates of female sterilization in the world provided free by the government in sterilization camps to control population. There are between four to five million women sterilized every year. Some media reports claim sterilization is popular for family planning because it’s free & “sidesteps cultural resistance to & problems with distribution of other types of contraception in rural areas.” Cultural resistance? Problems with distribution? You can peddle that baloney to a kindergartner but it’s just a slick way of blaming people for the policies of their government. Is it difficult to distribute birth control because primary healthcare is in such a sorry state? India reportedly has one of the world’s worst records on maternal healthcare (& that’s saying a mouthful) with high death rates for both mothers & infants at birth. Media reports don’t distinguish who the women are by caste but just as Gandhi’s forced sterilization program targeted Dalits, it is certain they are most affected now.

It isn’t that sterilization is popular with young women but that the government does not provide alternative birth control in order to compel sterilization without putting a gun to the women’s heads. Women who ask about birth control are told surgical sterilization is their only choice. It offers incentive fees of about US $10-20 which is about a week’s pay in a country where 180 million people live on less than $1.25 a day. The government offers those payments to the women, to the health workers recruiting them, to the doctors & sets sterilization quotas for each state. Sterilization is the cornerstone of India’s corrupt family planning system.

Now there’s something curious going on here because at the London Family Planning Conference in 2012 attended by all the big players in population control/eugenics, over $4.6 billion was pledged to family planning programs & India was one of the target countries. In addition, the Gates Foundation targeted India directly & through Family Planning 2020 (where private donors invest in family planning) to the tune of millions of dollars. The Gates Foundation boasts of its collaboration with the Indian government in family planning. So are they involved in these sterilization camps? Is that where the incentive money comes from? But then why are there no family planning programs in India? Why isn’t birth control available? Why is prenatal care inadequate? Where the hell is all that money going? Because if you look at the conditions in the sterilization camps, you find instances like in West Bengal where 106 women were dumped in a nearby field for recovery from surgery. You find women dragged out of recovery & sent home contrary to sound medical practice; women given inferior, questionable medicines that kill. Or you find instances of squalid grimy health facilities where one surgeon works on 83 women in six hours. And you find thousands of cases every year of failed operations, complications, or death due to sterilization. So what exactly is the agenda here?

The thing eugenics freaks & neoliberal marauders won’t see is there are human beings involved here; women who may be poor but who loved & were loved, women who will be missed & leave others broken-hearted. They are not just quotas. That’s why, once again, women must fight the historic battles against eugenicists like those in the Gates Foundation & US & Indian governments to take control of health care, of reproductive rights & services & wield them in the service of women.

This grieving woman is Khelan Bai, the grandmother of one of the 13 women who died after sterilization. Our deepest condolences & fullest solidarity in finding justice.

(Photo by Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters)

This is what happens to you when you’re evil. He’s famous for saying “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”. What does that cynicism tell you about his “love” life? In his swinger days the starlets he chased had to swill down a couple quarts of whiskey before each encounter & required therapy thereafter. Some remain in long-term care.

We look forward to writing his obituary. And our patience is wearing thin.

You learn a lot of things snooping around on Zionist websites. Kooky things. One link was to David Icke’s website & an article entitled “How the Vatican Created Islam.” The story is reported as coming from an ex-Jesuit priest who heard it from a cardinal in the Vatican. In other words, not the kind of testimony that would hold up in small claims court. What the article lacks in coherence & good sense, not to mention historical accuracy, it more than makes up for in sheer tonnage of words.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” but these makeshift barriers are another matter entirely. At least two major commercial districts in Hong Kong are still filled with Occupy-style encampments despite frequent assaults from riot cops & goon squads. Hong Kong’s High Court has just authorized cops to go after the protesters & arrest them & these barriers are a protesters best defense.

Authorities are in something of a tough spot since they do not want another scenario like Tiananmen Square but they do want to clear the areas & end the protests which began September 26th. Chinese officials in collusion with Hong Kong tycoons continue to hold out against demands of the protesters for democratic elections. Controlling elections is about maintaining one-party rule in China. Any concessions to the Hong Kong movement, any bending to mass pressure would set a political precedent that would reverberate in mainland China, already seething with political discontent.

For how many years have Black parents & especially Black males had to put up with Bill Cosby pontificating all over the media about their alleged insufficiencies? He castigated parents for raising undisciplined, irresponsible kids, for teen pregnancy, & school dropout rates; he upbraided Black men for beating their wives & made it seem they all did it; ridiculed them for bad grammar & cursing; mocked Black unemployment & minimum wage jobs saying they brought it on themselves with reckless life styles & mostly he told them to stop blaming whites. The racists ate it up & the power elite considered him a God-send because it got them off the hook big-time–especially for their war on Black teens–about which he never raised a peep of objection.

He’s apparently emboldened imitators, including Charles Barkley who claims Blacks are brainwashed to think “if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not Black enough”. We don’t want to throw stones, but how does such a fine, upstanding citizen as Barkley explain his compulsive gambling habit where he’s pissed away nearly $13 million? It’s not the worst of vices but some would call it idiocy, especially the ones working long hours at minimum wage. Of course as long as Barkley keeps talking ragtime, the TV gigs will keep rolling in & he can afford to throw money away.

But now, after years of Cosby’s epic tirades, we learn that over several years more than 15 women including a former cast member & at least one teenager have accused Cosby of sexual assault, claiming he targeted & groomed his victims, drugged & raped them. One woman filed a suit against him in 2005 with ten women lined up to testify he’d also raped them. Cosby avoided prosecution by settling the lawsuit out of court for an unspecified amount of money. It’s called hush money. Media never made a big issue out of it because then he’d lose his use-value as a mouthpiece justifying racism. So the victims remained silent & the rapist remained a loud-mouth without shame.

It could be considered a cautionary tale about throwing in your lot with tyranny against the oppressed for personal gain. But it’s also another case when ‘karma is a bitch’. A few weeks ago, Hannibal Buress, a Black comedian stirred controversy in a stand-up routine where he called Cosby a rapist & castigated him for smugness. Then Monday, Cosby’s Twitter account posted a link to a meme-generator on his website inviting followers to “Go ahead. Meme me!” Karma used a hashtag to wreak vengeance. The meme thing backfired when followers created them about the rape charges with memes like “My two favorite things: Jello pudding & rape” & “When you realize you got enough cash to pay off the victim”. Cosby’s PR team took the meme-generator down but many found their way to Twitter. Karma, thy name is justice! And Twitter is your game.

It isn’t going to be easy for Cosby to come back on TV spouting homilies & reproaches to Black kids or telling parents what they’re doing wrong. That gig is over. And another fool bites the dust!

(Photo is from the CosbyMeme campaign on Twitter)

Sorry to be on Pope Francis’ case, but yesterday he expressed solidarity with the families of the 43 missing student teachers in Mexico, saying “We know it was murder.” Of course, that’s not even in dispute by the Mexican government. It makes one wonder why he didn’t recognize ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Some may laud his solidarity in Mexico as a baby step in the right direction. I don’t like to insult his intelligence like that.

When we read about the US-NATO mission in Afghanistan, which gets improvised & modified every so often, we wonder how that emancipation of women thing is going. After they set up the vaunted nail salon in Kabul have there been any other developments? Have Afghani women objected at all to having their homes, schools, clinics, mosques, fields bombed & their families killed now that they can get their nails done?

Apparently the marines have been so busy with that salon & facilitating drug trafficking they haven’t gotten around to dealing with barbaric labor conditions. But what’s emancipation for if not a manicure!? Part of the war propaganda is demonizing Afghani men & we get the full panoply of charges: honor killings, child brides, forced marriages, women as chattel. And that’s supposed to make us want to bomb them.

Well take a look at this fellow, a coal miner at a dump site outside Mazar-i-Sharif, & see if you’ve got it in you to take a drone after him. Or if instead you identify with him as a human being & fellow worker subjected to unspeakable labor conditions & exploitation.

Get a gander of the safety equipment he is wearing. Nada, zip, nothing–nearly 200 years after doctors identified the causes of black lung disease. It is caused by inhaling coal dust. It is debilitating, often fatal, & there is no cure. According to two centuries of substantial data, people in coal mining communities have increased risk for many chronic illnesses, skin disease, kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) such as emphysema (that means they can’t breath), fibrosis & necrosis of lung tissue, high blood pressure, high mortality rates. All these health threats to people with little access to health care, eating inadequate diets, living in poor housing conditions, & living in a war zone.

Of course, in the US–the valiant emancipating country–black lung disease still kills over 1,000 coal miners a year; in China it kills over 6,000 miners a year. And when you include the death figures from the many other countries engaged in barbaric mining practices, you’ve got quite an indictment on your hands. Black lung cases in the US have more than doubled in the past 15 years because safety laws have been strip mined in the interests of increasing production. Coal mining isn’t just dirty energy; it’s dirty business all around when you subject millions of workers to health problems & premature death.

But hey, in Afghanistan, the men are a piece of work–not at all like the US marines sent to liberate the women. Those soldiers only rape, torture, massacre, mutilate & piss on corpses in the interests of freedom & under the banner of democracy. Too bad the women can’t hear the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” over the sound of drones. But at least they have their nails done.

(Photo by Anil Usyan/Reuters)

What’s not to love about Michael Moore’s defense of Bill Maher!? It’s a shabby little testament to stupidity & corruption & to the crisis of comedy in the service of oligarchy. They aren’t the first comedians to sing for their supper & they won’t be the last. No one says comedians need be social critics; you can be like Jerry Seinfeld & crack jokes about nothing. At least he’s funny. Or you can be like Andrew Dice Clay & Eddie Murphy & try to pass off social hatred as humor. Or you can be like Bill Cosby & Chris Rock & pander to racism so you get gigs in the bigger venues. Or you can just be tamed like Whoopie & Rosie O’Donnell & take up hosting banal talk shows. But if you’re going to pretend you’re a social critic like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, or George Carlin, you can’t try to pawn off misanthropy, misogyny, & Islamophobia in its stead.

Moore flattered Maher for “speaking truth to power.” (When you lack thinking skills or you’re talking ragtime, you have to resort to cliches.) Both men operate as social critics within parameters–& very circumscribed ones indeed. So Moore can spout off about gun control & Maher can snarl on about religion. They can even express opposition to the war in Afghanistan & other government policies that don’t distinguish either one from millions of people around the world. Taking swipes at politicians is not speaking truth to power. Maher is an echo chamber for reactionary political forces & by no means breaks new ground in politics or wit. Or is someone going to argue his Islamophobia is different from that of Pamela Geller? Maher is a misanthrope who holds the human race in contempt & hates some more than others. His rancid hatred of Muslims is only matched by his hatred for women. When Moore defends this crap he only exposes his own political & moral bankruptcy.

Moore was really scraping dregs when he said, “Comedy is & should be a dangerous business. But in order to encourage them to take those chances, we have to give them some leeway, give them a break when, in our mind, they’ve crossed that line.” Oh really!? What kind of crap is that!? Unless you have a stunted sense of humor, Maher hasn’t been funny for a very long time, at least not since hate took over his psyche & buried what little wit he had in stinking manure. What kind of leeway are we being asked to give social hatred & stupidity? Anything goes if you couch it in a quip & have the canned laughter ready?

When does the comedy start? Laughter is one of the loveliest things about human beings & it’s universal. But laughter at the expense of those who are fat or homely (to a twisted mind) or disabled or female or gay or anything else is not humor. It is anti-social hatred which does not recognize the beauty of human beings but instead preys on vulnerabilities & supposed flaws.

Some may say it’s hypocritical to skewer those in power (like politicians & the moochocracy) in attempts at political satire. Those many need to understand the function of power relations in humor. Maher & Moore both do. Which is why their humor is a sustained paean to the status quo & which is why neither is very funny anymore. Kissing ass & social hatred just aint that amusing.