Even if you think of Hillary Clinton as a stand-up comedian in the Janus-faced tradition it’s hard to tolerate her when she speaks. Sardonic cannot soften the revulsion of her lies. The former US War-Monger in Chief said the US should never use or condone the CIA torture program on suspected terrorists & claimed the Obama regime “banned illegal renditions & brutal interrogations.”

But she really is amusing if you picture her in an orange prison jumper in the docket of a criminal courtroom & imagine those “suspected terrorists” from Guantanamo lined up to bear witness to the crimes she denies.

So as media tries to wind us up to a frenzy of Islamophobia after the massacre in Pakistan by the Islamist Taliban we should look at some of the artistic & architectural achievements inspired by Islam to understand that the politics of the Taliban are driven by something other than the Quran.

When I first discovered what is called Islamic Art in the early 1970s, it was like falling in love; I had such an affinity with the aesthetic & would spend hours & hours in the galleries. Perhaps the genre is too broadly defined because the Islamic empire included vastly different cultures all influenced differently by Islam–but I didn’t know that then.

Art is a very powerful force giving one insight into the soul of a culture & into its heart, & sometimes into its traumas. It’s inconceivable that the kind of vision which created this beautiful edifice & thousands of others even more magnificent could possibly generate hate. The Taliban are not rooted in Islam but in colonialism. And if we don’t get that, we’ll be looking for answers for why this massacre happened in all the wrong places.

(Photo is Isfahan, Iran by Kazuyoshi Namachi)

Condemnation of the Taliban murder of 145 school children in Pakistan has been swift & furious. Ban Ki-moon called it “blood-curdling” with no possible justification; John Kerry, who does not flinch from genocide in Gaza, said “This act of terror angers & shakes all people of conscience.” Although how the hell would he know how people of conscience respond? Martin Schulz, the head of the EU parliament, said “This crime is abominable & cowardly, & leaves us stunned & speechless.” But not as speechless as he was during the Israeli siege of Gaza! With haughty indignation he rears up on his hind legs to protest: “And what surely shocks us in particular, is that they don’t even hesitate to murder children.” He must have missed when Israeli bombers went after the children of Gaza.

Most of us outside Pakistan don’t have a clue who the Taliban are. They’re a shadowy paramilitary political force likely riddled with police agents. Since information available here is sifted through Islamophobia & war propaganda, most of us don’t know squat about who they are. But it’s pretty clear their politics & perspectives stink to high heaven. Even so, before we follow the lead & start denouncing like Ban Ki-moon & the boys we ought to get the facts straight. It’s not a matter of holding off judgement on the massacre of children but of holding off judgement on who the perpetrators are.

Media reports Pakistan special forces led a rescue operation against seven Taliban terrorists. Media has been more reticent to report on the sustained bombing campaign conducted in that region by the Pakistani military which has surely killed a lot more than 145 civilians & dislocated millions.

It is absolutely vile that school children would be made pawns in the conflict between the Pakistani military & the Taliban–whoever the hell they are. Whoever is behind this massacre should be hunted down & prosecuted. But it’s not inconceivable that hunt will lead straight back to the Pakistani regime.

There isn’t a reason in the world to let Pope Francis off the hook for his silence on Israeli ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But he’s been making some seasonal pronouncements worth nothing. No offense to the Pontiff, but we didn’t need him to speak ex cathedra to tell us there’s a place for pets in heaven. We knew that. It is a big improvement over St. Augustine who didn’t think there was a place for women. So with the Pope’s blessing you can now conduct rituals when you bury your beloved companions & are free to utter “May they RIP.” And you’re free to do the same for your mother.

The Pontiff is less impressive when rebuking those who equate Islam with violence. Turkey might not have been the best choice of venue for making his statement & it would have been good if he had just stopped there. Instead he went on to urge Muslim leaders to issue a “global condemnation of terrorism to help dispel the stereotype.” They may want to consider that right after the Pontiff issues a belated global apology for the Inquisition.

Where our man did good is in his scheduled speech (Jan. 1st 2015) on modern slavery entitled “No Longer Slaves, But Brothers & Sisters.” Our heartfelt desire tempered by skepticism is that his speech will be more than abstract moralizing & will nail neoliberalism as the common denominator in human bondage. Naming names would be a starter. Abstractions let too many off the hook & are indistinguishable from Obama commiserations.

And lastly, Vatican officials met with US war-monger in chief, John Kerry to offer assistance in closing down Guantanamo. The offer will be declined but the willingness to apply moral pressure on the US is an admirable thing. Not ground-breaking, but admirable. The media report on the offer had this to say: “Obama came to power six years ago promising to close Guantanamo, but has been frustrated in his efforts by a combination of opposition from Congress & the difficulties involved in finding homes for prisoners who are often unwanted by their home states &/or suspected of involvement in terrorist actions, including the September 11, 2001, attacks in some cases.” When it comes to alibis, that’s a beauty. They can’t find homes for the prisoners so they continue to waterboard, anally rape, terrorize & humiliate, & threaten to take out their families.

If it’s just a case of finding refuge, there are millions of decent people around the world who would welcome them into their homes; there are actually governments who would provide sanctuary.

So nice job, Pope Francis on Guantanamo. We await your solidarity with Palestinians.

(Photo of Pope Francis from Huffington Post)

One regrettable consequence of the report on CIA atrocities is that Cheney has returned from the crypt to defend torture & his criminality. Everybody likes him better dead. Even Bush is afraid of him. We await that glorious moment when he’s cemented into his tomb, delivered to hell, & millions can recite celebratory obituaries whilst they piss on his image. You won’t want to get near that crypt for the stench. Even now he clears the halls of power when he appears. The man doth reek.

Before he skulks away again in ignominy we should note his repugnant physical & moral resemblance to The Penguin from Batman, rumored to be not just his role model but his ancestry.

Neoliberal agribusiness, which dispossesses millions of farmers & farm workers, has created massive migration abroad & to urban slums. Millions of people create makeshift shanty towns on unused property which brings them into conflict with real estate developers & urban gentrification. There have been pitched, sustained battles between slum residents being evicted & riot cops using tear gas, truncheons & bulldozers–most notably in Cambodia & the Philippines.

But there is a troubling phenomenon associated with these slums in several countries including India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Nigeria, Kenya: massive conflagrations that burn them to the ground & displace the residents. Fire forensics are seldom reported but officials always give the same litany of speculations: could have been a cooking accident, faulty or pirated power lines, flimsy, flammable building materials, overcrowding, piles of recycling materials gathered by residents from dumpsites to resell, or sometimes just “cause unknown”. Sounds reasonable enough except that residents tell a very different story. They claim fire trucks arrived late to the scene; residents were forced to fight the fires themselves with buckets of water; once they did arrive firemen were unable to douse flames due to shortage of water; & perhaps most damning of all, the fires happened after repeated eviction orders from authorities.

There are hundreds of fires going back over a decade. Arson for purposes of land development & gentrification is the most compelling explanation, given the eviction notices & frequent violent eviction battles between riot cops & residents. It wouldn’t be the first time arson was used to facilitate gentrification. It was not uncommon in the US in the 1970s for urban renewal. The combativeness of residents against evictions might make torching the settlements seem the strategy of least resistance to developers.

Some residents have been killed in the fires, including elderly, infirm, children, & pets unable to escape; many have been injured; people have lost all their belongings; & tens of thousands have been dislocated with no place to go.

The process of development & gentrification using forced evictions & fires is nowhere more ruthless than the Manila metropolitan area in the Philippines. There are dozens of fires every year; there were at least one or two a month this year alone in several districts all charted for development orchestrated by Henry Sy, a real estate tycoon, & Enrique Razon Jr., a shipping magnate, who are two of the four Filipino billionaires. What’s interesting about these two guys is that they use complex real estate swindles to illegally reclaim & refurbish prime real estate without permits & on untitled public domain property occupied by shanty towns. Their real estate swindles are just the vehicle for neoliberal privatization policies which is why so many Filipino politicians, government agencies, the courts, & the cops are involved against slum residents.

There have been three fires in Manila this month in different districts. This little guy is swimming in the debris of a December 10th fire in Malabon city, a district along the rim of Manila Bay, one of the primary areas targeted for development by shipping companies & resort/casino developers.

Housing is a primary human need not available to millions of people worldwide & must become a central political demand. “Money for housing, not for war” is an apt slogan in the Philippines since militarism is a feature of Filipino political rule.

(Photo by Bullitt Marquez/AP)

A few days ago I announced I’m running as a socialist candidate for President of the US in the 2016 elections. You live as long as me you don’t kid yourself about what’s possible. Some things are just excluded–like being POTUS or winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I can live with that. But it will be mainly an educational campaign to counterpose socialist ideas to the blithering idiocies & criminality of the two capitalist parties.

I’d like to announce my running mate as Vice President: Tyrone Hubbard is from a small town in Alabama & graduated from college about a year ago. He’s knowledgeable & presents our ideas with the passion they deserve. There’s nothing platonic about his commitment to a humane society.

A couple of people enquired why I asked Tyrone to be my running mate. One person wondered why I didn’t ask someone with more tenure as a socialist. The answer isn’t complicated & in some ways was more visceral than cognitive.

I’ve been active a long time & have seen a lot of young people come & go. I am always drawn to the inspired & open-minded & put off by smart-alecks, know-it-alls, cynics. If you are going to commit to social transformation you have to be able to learn, willing to question, & absolutely intolerant of those who try to make others feel small. But mostly you have to be able to feel & to understand the power of these ideas to make the world suitable for human beings to live & love in.

I admire Tyrone’s spirit as a young socialist. There’s no other way to put it. He’s knowledgeable because he takes ideas seriously. But he doesn’t flaunt his intellectualism to intimidate others. He respects theory & learning to understand how to change the world. I probably could have found somebody who would quote chapter & verse of Marx & Engels & do textual comparisons with Lukacs & Althusser. I respect theory a lot. But I don’t like showoffs. And I don’t like people who would rather talk Zizek than the problems of working people in this society.

I don’t think I could have found a better side-kick to collaborate with & I am grateful Tyrone agreed.

We’re starting early because we don’t have squat & want to start scouting for opportunities across the country to speak on campuses, to immigrant rights, Palestinian solidarity, women’s, civil rights, LGBT, & antiwar groups, & on the radio. Call us crazy but we think we have something to say that people will want to hear.

This little girl named Cynthia is waiting for dead bodies to be removed from Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia so she can be admitted & treated for Ebola. The critical ward of Redemption Hospital, with plastic-covered mattresses shoved against each other on the floor, looks more like a renovated chicken coop than an epidemic treatment center.

Some of the most human & moving images of the epidemic, including the image of 11-year-old Esther Tokpah who was orphaned & this of Cynthia, were taken by Michel du Cille, a renowned photojournalist for the Washington Post. The humanity of his work is reminiscent of Muhammed Muheisen, the photojournalist who powerfully captures Afghan refugee children in Pakistan & also works in other conflict areas.

Michel du Cille died on Thursday while on assignment in Liberia, not from Ebola but from a heart attack. In October, after undergoing a 21-day quarantine for Ebola, he was disinvited from speaking to photojournalist students at Syracuse University in New York. He denounced this hysteria in a Post article. But of course, much of the hysteria has been created in the media, not unlike the early days of HIV.

We should take a moment to honor du Cille for his work helping to humanize the catastrophes of neoliberal healthcare & helping us understand what needs to be done in solidarity.

(Photo by Michel du Cille/Washington Post/Getty Images)

Baba Wawa just released her profile for most fascinating person of 2014: Amal Clooney, spouse of George & former corporate lawyer whose clientele included Enron & Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that helped Enron cook the books in one of the biggest corporate frauds of the early 21st century. (There’s nearly 100 years left to go; give them time. If we don’t take them out, they’ll easily top it.)

Media describes her as a human rights lawyer but her resume on that is sketchy & only if you agree with the US Supreme Court that corporations are people too. The UN asked her to adjudicate Israeli human rights crimes in Gaza during Operation Ethnic Cleansing but she declined saying her schedule didn’t permit it. Give her credit for avoiding confrontation with her new spouse who war-mongers against Sudan with Rabbi Steve Gutow & Rabbi David Saperstein, the US Ambassador for Religious Freedom, both of whom are outspoken Zionists.

Wawa isn’t known for asking the hard questions. After unseemly fawning & girlish talk of wardrobe, she will query what kind of tree Amal always wanted to be & what George is like in bed. There’ll be some blushing & some tittering but the things that make Amal, not interesting, but a person of interest will be elided.

(Image of Amal Clooney from google)

Most of my dust-ups & unfriendings on social media have been over anti-semitism or defense of the burqa as a civil liberties issue. When it comes to anti-semitic hatred it’s an expeditious thing. Press the block button & they’re gone. But you just can’t believe people give a rat’s ass about what women wear or why they feel the need to vilify veil wearers as robotically controlled. So sometimes you find yourself irresistibly drawn into debates on the matter. At what point in life do you smarten up & avoid the Facebook brawls?

Let me just make one point now that burqa opponents don’t want to hear: when you go after the rights of women to wear the veil in a climate of Islamophobia, you open the women to attacks in the courts & the streets & you undermine civil liberties, most importantly freedom of religion.