An Egyptian kangaroo court upheld the death sentence of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. In Egypt, that’s by hanging or firing squad. He’s guilty of treacheries against the Egyptian people–in particular, colluding with the military while in office–but he is not guilty of the charges against him, including plotting a jailbreak, attacking police in the 2011 Egyptian uprising, & spying for Hamas & Hezbollah.

We can disagree till the cows come home about the nature of the coup that bounced him; we can even disagree about the character of his politics. But we should be able to agree that the ferocious crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood by the General Sisi junta is an outrage–whether you like the MB’s politics or not or condemn their reactionary role while Morsi was in office. Hundreds have been killed & thousands incarcerated.

President Erdogan of Turkey has offered political asylum to Morsi. It’s not that smart to hang politicians that played ball with the junta & the oligarchs. There’ll be fewer minions willing to do it in the next crisis–which is certain to come. So it’s still possible Morsi will get a reprieve to Turkey.

He was no rebel or champion of democracy; on the contrary, he was a violent opponent of the Egyptian uprising. But a show trial in a kangaroo court is not justice. It’s an attempt of the junta to demoralize & destroy every vestige of popular resistance. Morsi & the MB are scapegoats.You can detest the role of the MB when Morsi was in office but you cannot in justice stand mute while the regime goes after them hammer & tong, assaulting them, shooting them down, arresting & torturing them, declaring them a terrorist organization. The defense of the MB today is the defense of the Egyptian revolution.

These show trials make crystal clear how linked the Palestinian struggle is to the Egyptian revolution. When the kangaroo court made Hamas a centerpiece in the trial it is because solidarity between Palestinians & Egyptians is the very heart of social transformation in the Middle East.

Our fullest solidarity with the MB under attack & our strongest condemnation of this kangaroo travesty.

(Photo of Morsi in his courtroom cage from EPA)

Just when you think US political campaigns can’t get any more farcical, Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president. There’s a Monty Python skit in there somewhere. To think that Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton could possibly look good by comparison! It’s probably the hair. When I concede defeat in 2016, I may be booking a flight off the mainland.

Just like refugees at the border between Morocco & the Spanish territories of Ceuta & Melilla have Moroccan cops beating them from the rear & Spanish cops beating them from the front, African refugees here at Ventimiglia, Italy on the border with France have Italian police trying to drag them back & French police trying to keep them out. And to think that just a week ago, the Italian government was pledging to deny them shelter & right-wing politicians in the north were vowing to keep them out of the northern Italian provinces. Now they’re fighting to keep them sleeping on the ground?

This is where you see the bare-knuckles of European Union (EU) immigration policy, racist & xenophobic up to its eyeballs. The EU is making a mockery of international law & exposing it as nothing but unenforceable sentimentality. And not for the first time. The duty to give sanctuary should not have to be embedded in law but when it is, it ought to be respected. Under neoliberalism, those humanitarian laws are rendered useless. That’s what political solidarity is all about: enforcing through massive political & international pressure the right of human beings fleeing war, occupation, bombing, plunder, poverty to be given sanctuary.

This family is part of the group in Ventimiglia, Italy refusing to budge & go back to a place that doesn’t want them, where politicians are whipping up hatred against them, & where they’re denied even a place on a cement floor.

Our fullest solidarity with them.

(Photo by Jean Christophe Magnenet/AFP/Getty Images)

We should take a moment to honor the millions of immigrants & refugees now on a forced march from neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, & commit ourselves to standing up for immigrant rights as human rights. We (still) have the political power to act on their behalf since they’re being denied all rights & sanctuary. We are guided by the iron law of social transformation that “an injury to one of our brothers or sisters is an injury to all of us.”

This fellow is sleeping rough in Ventimiglia, at the border between Italy & France. For the past four days there’s been a stand-off between a group of about 200 African refugees (including women & children) & the French border police. With admirable defiance, the exhausted, beleaguered refugees are refusing to leave the border until they are admitted to France & can continue their journey north to live & work.

Our deepest respect for the toughness of the human spirit in the worst of situations & our fullest solidarity. Godspeed on their journey.

Immigration is a human right. Open the damn border.

(Photo by Massimo Pinca/AP)

Thirty to forty-percent cuts in Greek pensions? Seniors on public bread lines? No health care for children? And the IMF is bleeding the country for a debt payment in two weeks? Guess SYRIZA wasn’t the answer. Maybe capitalism doesn’t work even on paper.

This is a situation fraught with the ugliest ironies of neoliberal militarism. This young man is carrying a sick woman off a ship docked in a Somali port fleeing the Saudi-led (& US-backed) war against Yemen.

The Yemen border with Saudi Arabia is usually the site of a massive immigration crisis with refugees from US war & bombing in Somalia along with other refugees from Ethiopia & Eritrea sleeping in the rough & trying to enter Saudi Arabia for work. Saudi Arabia has built a barrier wall there & the Yemen military help deter immigration.
Now, under a siege of massive Saudi bombing, refugees from Yemen are fleeing to another US-war zone in Somalia where they may find temporary respite from misery–likely sleeping in the rough.

It’s a gruesome scenario. How many cruelties can some people endure? And others be allowed to impose? You can blither on about the problems with the Houthis & Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. But the political problems of Yemen are for the people of Yemen to resolve. As we saw in the massive & impressive Arab uprising in Yemen, many of them have strong ideas about what is needed & all of their ideas begin & end with democracy. None of them include US intervention or Saudi Arabian bombing. And the same is true in Somalia & every other country. The people of the US & Saudi Arabia aren’t that fond of their own regimes & can’t for the life figure out why a half-baked feudal monarchy & a militarist war machine think they have the right to bomb “democracy” (spell that economic & political control) into others.

US & Saudi Arabia out!

(Photo by Abdiqani Hassan/Reuters)

This photo is from yesterday, taken at Akcakale in southeast Turkey on the border with Syria. Syrian refugees are breaking down barbed wire fences to enter Turkey in flight from ISIS thugs & warded off by Turkish water cannons.

We witnessed a similar scenario in the Andaman Sea just a few weeks ago when Rohingya were denied refuge by several countries & then “rescued” by the Myanmar navy & brought back to the site of their violent persecution.

At the time, the Turkish regime announced it was dispatching a navy ship to rescue the Rohingya. Is there any evidence they ever showed up? They also offered aid to Malaysia & Indonesia to build settlement centers for the Rohingya. Was that just big talk too? Because when it comes to humanitarian aid, politicians promise the sky & deliver zip.

Immigration is a human right. But marauding around the planet, tearing it up for purposes of plunder & control, creating massive human dislocation is not a right. It is neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, & human beings have a right & a duty to children to put an end to the barbarism.

(Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

Last week, thousands of Syrian refugees surged at the Turkish border at Akcakale fleeing from fighting between ISIS, Kurds, the Assad regime, & US bombers. The Turkish regime met them with water cannons & kept them standing behind barbed wire fences for days without shelter, water, or food while they tried to figure out a way to keep them out.

Yesterday, photos from Akcakale show refugees pushing through the barbed wire, breaking down the fences, passing infants & children across the fence while the Turkish military bombarded them with water cannons. This photo, also from yesterday, shows ISIS thugs railroading Syrians back from the fences to the city they fled. What more need be said in condemnation of the Turkish regime?

As the largest military component of NATO, Turkey has received billions of dollars in US economic & military aid for decades, ostensibly for counterterrorism & “regional stability.” The US has hundreds of military personnel permanently stationed in Turkey & has negotiate to  use Turkey for assaults across Iraq’s border. Turkey itself plans on deploying troops into Iraq, not to engage in combat they claim, but to “marshal refugees & safeguard an ethnic Turkish Turkmen minority in the Kurdish controlled region.”

So while they’re driving thousands of Syrian refugees back into the clutches of ISIS they’ll be rescuing Iraqi, Turkish, & Kurdish refugees from ISIS in Iraq? That’s the biggest pile of horse manure they’ve tried to peddle since the last time the Turkish regime opened its trap. That’s called Pentagon-speak.

Nothing speaks more loudly to the regional destabilization in the entire Middle East, caused by US-NATO, than the millions of refugees trying desperately to escape war & bombing.
No to US-NATO wars! Open the borders!

(Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

This is a Kuna mother surrounded by her children (family not named in articles). The Kuna (also called Guna) are an indigenous people who live in Guna Yala, an autonomous archipelago off the coasts of Panama & Colombia. They have the highest rate of albinism in the world.

In some countries like Tanzania & Uganda, albinos sustain threatening, even deadly discrimination & persecution & are considered a curse on the family. In countries like the US, such social tensions are avoided by making people with disability invisible. They’re expected to stay out of public view & live in a parallel universe so the rest of society is not uncomfortable.

Traditionally, Kuna albinos were viewed as sacred, venerated, & gifted as Children of the Moon or Grandchildren of the Sun. With outside intervention from European cultures, that heritage is not always honored.

Albinos are of course not a curse but they do have special health problems, especially in the tropical sun where they suffer high rates of skin cancer & vision problems.

The contrast between viewing those with disability as sacred or a curse or invisible highlights the compelling need for humanity to stop constructing false explanations & hateful solutions for those born different but the same. To paraphrase the Roman writer Terence, “no human being is alien to us.”

(Photo from Reuters)

Am I the only one who wants a translation service for academic-speak? I don’t understand a word they say even when I read it ten times. There’s too many words that don’t mean anything. Call me old school, but language should be to communicate.