Got another Nostradamus prediction: when Bernie Sanders bombs out of the nomination & throws his support to Clinton, the Sanders revolutionaries will play the scam out with him & move from feigned inspiration to political doggerel: “But if we don’t vote for Clinton, we’ll have another Bush in power.” Like it mattered a rat’s ass! Like they haven’t played it out a dozen times before. Like it isn’t a complete bore already.
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Ireland’s shameful role in immigration control for the European Union
This is an Irish Navy ship LE Niamh in the Sicilian harbor of Messina unloading the bodies of 14 refugees ‘found dead’ on a boat off the coast of Libya with more than 450 others. The spokesperson for the Italian coast guard gave no details about how they died. Well since the EU is involved in a naval operation to stop them from crossing, this might be a case of the devil being in the details. Are refugees still drowning with all those naval ships out there? Are they shooting weapons at the boats? Are they adrift, unable to proceed to Italy because of a naval blockade? What the hell is going on since the lives of tens of thousands of people are at stake? People who have beloved who want to know where they are & if they’re safe.
There is something more than wretched about the Irish government sending its navy to deter refugees in the Mediterranean. Last March, Ireland’s prime minister Enda Kenny appealed to Obama not to deport an estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish in the US. Isn’t Ireland experiencing one of the largest exodus of citizens in decades because the EU is squeezing the life blood out of working people? But as a member of the EU, it’s participating in the naval operation against African refugees? Such are the sarcasms of EU & US immigration policy.
Wouldn’t the Irish Navy better serve Ireland in its own waters warding off European fishing trawlers coming in & dragnetting everything that moves in the sea & destroying the livelihoods of Irish fishermen? Wouldn’t Irish working people be much better off if the EU was given the old heave-ho & drowned in the bottom of the sea?
Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.
(Photo by Antonio Parrinello/Reuters)
Anti-TPP protests in Hawaii
We’re taught to see Hawaii as a vacation paradise to cover up the brutal realities of the US military overthrow & annexation of the archipelago in 1893. Native Hawaiians have been driven out to mainland US where they live in diaspora & squalor while white supremacy manifests in luxury hotels, upscale malls, swanky golf courses.
The stale remake of the old TV drama “Hawaii Five-O” still shows whites in police authority & native Hawaiians only as subordinate & supporting characters.
There is a political movement in Hawaii to end discrimination against native Hawaiians. The singer Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole, now deceased, was a troubadour of their aspirations.
Here a mixed crowd gather near the hotel where the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) meeting is being held in Lahaina.
(Photo by Marco Garcia/Reuters)
We’re taught to see Hawaii as a vacation paradise to cover up the brutal realities of the US military overthrow & annexation of the archipelago in 1893. Native Hawaiians have been driven out to mainland US where they live in diaspora & squalor while white supremacy manifests in luxury hotels, upscale malls, swanky golf courses.
The stale remake of the old TV drama “Hawaii Five-O” still shows whites in police authority & native Hawaiians only as subordinate & supporting characters.
There is a political movement in Hawaii to end discrimination against native Hawaiians. The singer Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole, now deceased, was a troubadour of their aspirations.
Here a mixed crowd gather near the hotel where the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) meeting is being held in Lahaina.
(Photo by Marco Garcia/Reuters)
Refugees assaulted by French gendarmes at Calais
The ferocious EU assaults on refugees move from the Mediterranean to Macedonia to Serbia to Hungary to Calais. Here French gendarme/thugs are attacking unarmed refugees with truncheons & pepper spray near the Eurotunnel site at Calais where they are trying to cross into the UK. The refugee camp is called “the new jungle” with a racist insularity & stupidity that boggles the mind.
Whither France of the great democratic revolution against feudalism, of the 1968 revolution? Racism is now so structural to neoliberal capitalism that it has left no country uncorrupted. If refugees are not defended as brothers & sisters, if there is no mass opposition to this reactionary dynamic, all of society will pay the price in repression. It’s a case of chickens coming home to roost.
Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.
(Photo by Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images)
Driving while Black
Samuel Dubose was laid to rest today in Cincinnati. He was fatally shot by a campus policeman who stopped him for a missing front license plate. After Sandra Bland’s murder for changing lanes without signaling, it may appear routine traffic stops are becoming fatal for Blacks. In fact, the term “driving while Black” has long been used to describe harassment & racial profiling. Cars with Black drivers are stopped, the occupants searched, the cars torn apart in a search for drugs, & there are often charges for trivial offenses.
As I described in a 1992 article: “In one such incident, a young man was forced to lie on the ground in a puddle of urine while being frisked, another required to pull down his pants & underwear, others held in headlocks, & subjected to intrusive body searches, including a pat down of the genitals. This is harassment; this is police brutality under the guise of the war on drugs. There is also an alarmingly high incidence nationally of young Blacks being murdered during these police actions. In dozens of cases in almost 25 cities, police have assaulted or murdered Black youths, including several unarmed men shot in the back, a detainee shot while removing keys from his pocket, & a five-year-old boy. The policeman who shot the child used as his defense the fact that he had just read an article about “kids who kill” & was acquitted.”
What’s going on here, now for decades, is major assaults on the Bill of Rights in the Black community–most notably probable cause & search & seizure provisions. This highlights that “an injury to one is an injury to all” is not just a sentimental mantra but an iron law of social transformation. The majority of people believed media that Black teens were out of control, that swat team policing was necessary, & let the Black community stand alone against often martial law conditions. And now the Bill of Rights is in jeopardy for all of us. We either smarten up or we go down together.
Aristocracy struts its stuff despite bird poop
Obama in Kenya
It was distressing to see the repressive Kenyan regime gussying up kids & draping them in American flags for Obama’s recent visit. It’s an attempt to persuade the young that the US has only benign intent in Africa, rather than economic & military control that will make life unbearable for working people.
Such persuasion apparently doesn’t work very well since university students have had many confrontations with riot police on their campuses–on occasions, protesters were chased into classrooms & bombarded with tear gas.
Where there is resistance to repression, there is hope. Where there is such humanity as these small boys (walking home from school in Kogelo) there is not only hope but necessity for the success of those who stand against tyranny.
Activists around the world need to join forces in solidarity with Kenyan activists demanding “US hands off Africa!”
(Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)
Half-assed reporting on the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean
Photojournalism now is focusing on the thousands of Syrians, Afghans, Pakistanis, & Palestinians coming through Greece on their way to northern European countries. The stories are wrenching even though Greece has temporarily opened its borders. With the Troika firmly in control in Greece, that policy is likely to change back to conform with the barbarism of European Union (EU) policy.
What’s troubling is the complete lack of reports on refugees from Libya to Italy. That is the route where most of the drownings were happening & where the EU has now launched a naval assault on “human traffickers.” Right-wing publications have even fabricated an ISIS scare with headlines like “ISIS in Libya: overrun Europe with immigrants & ‘turn it into hell’.”
A few months ago, there were an estimated 500,000 African refugees in Libya waiting to cross to Italy. There were reports of naval ships from different European countries already in the Mediterranean along with helicopters & aerial surveillance. So what’s going on? Where are the refugees? Have they ceased crossing? Did they turn around & go back home? Has the EU shut down operations so they can no longer cross? Hasn’t a single news service tried to find out what’s going on?
This photo is Syrian & Afghan refugees landing at Lesbos.
Immigration is a human right. Open the damn borders.
(Photo by Santi Palacios/AP)
Protests in Guadalajara over Ayotzinapa 43
This young man in Guadalajara, Mexico is protesting the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa teachers college last September. The Mexican government, which sicced their military on the students, has declared the case closed. The families are refusing that verdict & believe their kids are being held in secret prisons. It’s one of the most important political battles in Mexico since in the past several years, over 30,000 people have been disappeared.
What’s remarkable about the protesters in Guadalajara is their defiance since Mexico is essentially occupied by its own military & bold, public political resistance like this is punishable–by disappearance.
Our deepest respect & solidarity with these activists.
(Photo by Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: a review
If anyone is looking for a fiction recommendation, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee is a remarkable book. It’s set in the US south in the 1930s & is about a white lawyer defending a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. It isn’t really of the white savior genre, like “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. Outside of a Black maid & caregiver & the courtroom appearance of the accused man, Black characters don’t figure in the story, reflecting the insular nature of segregation–not just then, but now.
Atticus Finch, the lawyer, is a high-principled fellow but not really the central character in the book. The narrator is his small daughter who portrays events from the perspective of a child. In many ways it’s as much a coming of age story as it is about the ugly insularities & criminality of Jim Crow (the US form of apartheid).
It’s filled with rich characters & portrays small town life in a way I think is probably universal & not particular to US or southern culture. I likely wouldn’t have read the book but it was on the agenda in my book club at the library. All of us–& it is a very thoughtful, insightful group of readers–loved the book. So if you’re looking for a quick & what is called “gripping” read, consider “To Kill a Mockingbird.”