The Obama regime has requested a total of $9.9 billion to fight ISIL over the next three years. What could possibly go wrong? Ask the Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Somalians, Yemenis, Syrians, Libyans, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Palestinians. Hell, ask Black kids on the other end of US military equipment in US cities.

Uma Thurman is being taunted in media for showing up on the red carpet without eye makeup. Mind you, she has a full face of makeup but not the false eyelashes that are de rigueur glamor. She resembles Tilda Swinton.

The scrutiny these actresses are put under to conform to a beauty matrix is vicious & it must be said, white supremacist. You can hardly distinguish the Latina under the layers of makeup & prosthetics imposed on women like Jennifer Lopez or Raquel Welch. Those Black women who make it in Hollywood have to look at least as Caucasian as Black.

But those false eyelashes are among the worst prosthetics since eyes truly are “the windows to the soul.” Movie stars have worn them for decades, along with phony hair & other trompe l’oeils of beauty, but now they’re showing up on young working women. The false lashes are mesmerizing but an utter distraction from their eyes. Is that because the misogynists who create the beauty matrix think women have no souls?

A secret of old age is there are no homely, ill-favored young people. They’re all just beautified by the energy of youth. There are no homely seniors either unless cruelty has been etched into the face.

This is not a diatribe against use of cosmetics. They’re fun to use & enhance one’s beauty. But when they hide beauty or hide that part of the soul we’re meant to see in each other, or shame us for what we are, then they become impedimental to a fully human life.

(Photo of Uma Thurman)

NBC has suspended Brian Williams for six months for lying. They wouldn’t want to be setting any precedents here. If they fire him for lying there are legions of politicians lined up to get canned instead of elected to the presidency or a presidential library of their own. American politics would come to a standstill since lying is the language of war

Apparently FEMEN hasn’t gotten the message that they’ve become irrelevant. Their exhibitionism took the media by storm for awhile & not just the media but the misguided left entranced by the sight of half-naked women with placards. They saw feminism redux & considered feminist critics “sex-negative,” dried up old prunes too ugly to get a man & jealous. Where have we heard that charge before!?

It wasn’t just that they tried to substitute exhibitionism for politics but what was deplorable was their unapologetic, low-level Islamophobia & the fact that they were controlled & bankrolled by a man. How unseemly is that!? And how like Slut Walks, where the organizers in several cities were men. They were undone, reduced to irrelevancy because their libidinal appeal could not compensate for their blatant Islamophobia & social hatred of Arabs.

They apparently don’t know that yet because they’re now making an important half-naked political statement at the pimping trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, jumping up & down on his car & shouting insults. Not long ago they were doing that in St. Peters Square & just recently were grandstanding in Davos. Can one of their former supporters please send them the memo that they’ve over-stayed their 15 minutes of fame?

Morocco plays the same role in immigration to European Union countries as Mexico plays in Central American immigration to the US: as a southern flank of repressive immigration policy. Yesterday, Morocco announced it would take “all due measures” to dismantle camps where thousands of African immigrants live while waiting for a chance to scale the fence into the Spanish territories of Melilla or Ceuta. They already frequently attack & attempt to destroy the camps but since immigrants have no place else to go, they just wait the cops out & move back.

The announcement must have set off a panic & today 600 immigrants attempted to storm the 20-foot (six-meter) fence at two different times in two different locations. You can’t see it in this photo but a small phalanx of Spanish riot cops are confronting them below. The ladders are not there to facilitate their entry into Spain without injury but to facilitate attacking the immigrants & deporting them on the spot in violation of international asylum laws. Thirty-five actually managed entry despite police assaults but five were injured including two with broken legs who need to be hospitalized.

The massive increase in immigration from African countries to Europe parallels that from Central America to the US. Neoliberal predation must be putting millions of people under such acute economic, political, & social pressure that they are forced to take perilous measures. There isn’t much reporting on how most African immigrants get to the Mediterranean area but if it’s anything like the trek from Central America to the US border, it’s a horror show–or worse. In 2013, there were 38 attempts to rush the fence at Melilla; 3,000 managed to get into Spain. In 2014, an estimated 16,000 immigrants made 65 rush attempts; about 5,000 got into Spain where they can lay claim to asylum rights under international, Spanish, & European Union laws & possibly move on to live & work in Europe.

Spain’s new security law targets immigrants & Spain is beefing up the border with more riot cops so they can beat entrants back & deport them on the spot without answering to their own damn laws. The Spanish government sleazes out of the laws by claiming the undocumented arrivals are social & economic immigrants, not refugees & asylum seekers. This is a distinction contrived in some think tank to deny millions the human right to move to, live, & work wherever the hell they want on this planet. It’s a distinction of no value–or as the French so eloquently put it, it’s “merde.”

The working people of Spain who are being thrown out of their jobs & out in the streets in mass evictions have much more in common with these immigrants than with the boneheads who run Spain & Europe or with that useless moochocracy who strut around the palace in phony military uniforms. When immigrant’s rights & struggles are linked to those of Europe’s working people there will be a new day dawning.

(Photo by Angela Rios/AFP/Getty Images)

It would be a whole lot easier to change the world if you could tell the difference between capitalism & socialism, if there was a place you could point to that stood for economic, political, & social equality. China ain’t that place. It’s trying to pull off some kind of magic trick–a combination of capitalism & socialism–but in the end it all comes out to barbarism.

This landfill in China is a case in point, where migrant workers compete with elderly & unemployed in scavenging as a means to survive. Most scavengers around the world earn between one or two US bucks a day. Chump change. A few reports however claim a scavenger in China can earn up to $16 bucks just for one old cell phone & that one old woman actually became a millionaire from scavenging. What do you bet those reporters are smoking dope or getting their information from questionable sources like the Politburo of China?

It’s a country of nearly 1.5 billion people & it’s estimated each produces about 2,000 pounds of household waste a year. That’s another iffy estimate since it’s more than Americans produce with considerably greater discretionary income. There is also massive industrial waste that has prompted thousands of protests across China in the past several years. The government stopped releasing annual protest statistics after the annual number surpassed 100,000 over several issues, including most prominently, environmental issues & land grabs. One staggering figure from a Chinese professor is there were 180,000 protests just in 2010. You can see why the government tried to block news on the mainland about the Hong Kong democracy protests.

Some articles attribute the waste problem to “wanton waste disposal” & explain that while the government tries to regulate recycling there is a low level of environmental awareness. When all else fails & your investigative powers aren’t up to snuff, blame the people. Why not? That’s what capitalism does.

In fact, since 2007 about 300 Chinese companies do a brisk multibillion-dollar business in importing & disposing of US & European waste including plastic bottles, cardboard, scrap paper, scrap metal, electronics, appliances, & almost anything else they can stuff in those shipping containers. In one recent year, the US sold almost $11 billion & 16 million tons worth of scrap to China. China imports nearly half of US recycled plastics, around $500 million worth. That doesn’t include what they’re hauling in from Europe. The land grabs are probably necessary to accommodate mountain ranges of waste.

In the past few years, almost certainly in response to massive environmental protests, China began Operation Green Fence to enforce higher standards for the waste they would accept. What do you bet the reform is all on paper & effects actual practice very little? So that medical waste & dirty diapers come along in the same container as the computers & cell phones full of toxic metals. Again, that’s what capitalism would do.

(Photo from Reuters)

Recycling workers around the world are just so grateful for neoliberal capitalist largesse & creativity in providing them work at dumps picking through stinking rot. This man in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti expresses his heartfelt gratitude with the international symbol of gratitude.

(Photo by Giles Clarke)

Capitalism is just an inexhaustible source of creativity. It puts feudalism to shame on that score. Here, for example, in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Under neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, waste management is considered an unaffordable luxury for cities. So they transport tons of it to countries they’re trying to re-colonize to provide work for the legions of unemployed who earn a few bucks a day scavenging through animal poop, dirty diapers, rotting food, swill to find plastic & other recyclables. Now isn’t that creative!? Such barbarism could only have been thought of under capitalism.

(Photo by Giles Clarke)

Brian Williams is having a crash & burn from fabricating a tale about being in a helicopter in Iraq that was fired on. They’re now looking at all his reporting to find other lies, especially in his coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Actually his coverage of Katrina was quite compelling because he forthrightly laid out the government’s refusal to rescue thousands of stranded Blacks for over a week. And forthright & honest is the last thing you expect from a news reader, especially about racism in the US.

He isn’t the first to fabricate personal heroics. Scores of politicians, including JFK & John Kerry, & almost all reporters do. It’s not just a staple in film; it’s an entire genre. Witness John Wayne films. After all, isn’t that what “American Sniper” is all about? TV is doing it now with psycho CIA agents as heroes on several series.

Nobody likes when people invent heroic tales but frankly it’s much more objectionable that Williams reads press releases from the US Pentagon, White House, & State Department as if it was real news & that he covers for US war crimes. That’s when lies count–not whether Williams was actually shot at or not. News readers are hired precisely for their ability to be believable telling lies & if our man gets canned it’s only because he jeopardizes their purposes, not because he wants to be a hero without doing the work. Reading from press releases & attending White House dinners doesn’t allow much opportunity for heroism; it just requires ability to act. Not unlike the US presidency.

Excuse my skepticism, since I grew up when getting the measles was no big deal, but are we expected to panic about 150 cases in a country of 350 million as if it was comparable to the Ebola epidemic?