Media generally operates by the mantra “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to ethnic cleansing & massive human rights crimes–like in Myanmar (or Kashmir). Instead, we are subjected to endless panegyrics about Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who is not so much silent on genocide as in tacit agreement.

For several weeks it was reported that 25,000 Rohingya had fled persecution, violence, & concentration camps in Myanmar to find refuge elsewhere. The world witnessed days of boats filled with Rohingya drifting without food or water in the Andaman Sea. We were coached by media to denounce the traffickers who abandoned the ships & ignore that they only abandoned when they weren’t allowed to port & discharge refugees & faced detention themselves.

But now all’s well: Indonesia & Malaysia took in 3,500 refugees; a Turkish military vessel said it was doing search & rescue; Myanmar picked up a few boats & dragged them back to the hell they fled from; & Obama “urged Myanmar to end discrimination.” Boy you don’t get tougher than urging, do you!? How about talking about genocide in Myanmar even half as tough as he does about ISIS?

But questions remain: what happened to the other 21,500 Rohingya? Are they still out there floating in death ships? Were they rescued? Did Turkey actually deploy a ship & rescue anyone? If they did, where did they take them? And what happened to those “rescued” by the Myanmar navy? Were they tortured or arrested for embarrassing the regime & its ignoble Nobel recipient? Or were they returned to concentration camps?

Just because media turns a blind eye doesn’t mean we should be fooled that all’s well in this worst of all possible hellholes. There’s some accounting to do to justice. What exactly has happened to the 21,500 Rohingya not yet accounted for?

Our fullest solidarity with the Rohingya.

Photo is of refugees in Indonesian refugee camp taken in late May.

(Photo by James Nachtwey/Time)

Many of you will be interested in hearing Haidar Eid, a leading Palestinian figure of the BDS campaign (who lives in Gaza & survived the three murderous bombing assaults on Gaza since 2009) explain the importance of BDS & Palestinian solidarity, & his views on the situation in Gaza.

Today I received a lovely note from a Facebook friend who said he appreciated my posts but finished reading “every piece with gripping sadness.” It isn’t my intent to add to the quotient of human sadness in the world; it’s hard enough to live. But it is my intent to create not just discomfort–& certainly not guilt–but indignation over how human beings are treated in this world. How can we commit to changing things if we don’t know exactly what’s going on?

American socialization teaches us we are the only truly civilized people in the world, the only ones who matter & puts us at odds with other people. I’m steeped in the gestalt of the 60s generation who could not/cannot live with such provincial horizons. That’s why so many seniors remain the backbone of social protest around the world.

There’s a wonderful quote from Terence, the Roman writer, which several writers have modified & used, including Marx & Tennessee Williams. I modified Williams’ version from Night of the Iguana: “Nothing human is alien to us, except violence & cruelty.” You can’t identify with such a high-flown statement without telling the truth about that which is alien to us.

And that’s why I’m the bearer of sad news.

This is 60-year-old Anna Kousoula, a pensioner who lives just outside Athens. Her pension is 300 euros (US $328) & on this she also supports her son who has been unemployed for over four years. Here she’s complaining about her empty refrigerator since due to bank freezes she’s unable to withdraw her pension. We can see she doesn’t live in splendor because a one bedroom apartment plus utilities costs nearly 100 euros more than her pension; just a gallon of milk is 4.60 euros. She can’t drink away her misery because a bottle of wine is 5.00 euros–in the oldest wine-producing region in the world.

It cannot be said capitalism is hanging by a thread but it is in massive, global crisis. How do you maintain oligarchic rule, balance competing economies, negotiate irreconcilable differences, & maintain your own privileges & wealth when protest is erupting everywhere, challenging your ability & right to rule? That’s where repression comes in, with police forces using tanks, assault weapons, tear gas against unarmed protesters. Popular democracy, ushered in with the great democratic revolutions that overthrew feudalism, has now become completely at odds with neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

The system may not be hanging by a thread but a sign of its panic & lack of options is that they’re trying to resolve the crises with bank maneuvers, hustling money from one country & one bank to another to prevent bankruptcy & collapse. Most importantly, they’re trying to resolve it on the backs of working people, especially seniors & young workers.

Why should pensioners like Anna Kousoula, who lives at a deficit, be asked to bail out the banks? Because as we know from the US bank bailout (under lesser-evil Obama), bankers & oligarchs made a bundle in that operation while millions of homeowners were repossessed.

There’s something fundamentally, fatally flawed with the system & whether or not we all agree it should be dumped, we can agree that working people should not have to bear the brunt of its problems or bail out the banks at our expense.

Our fullest solidarity with Greek working people (we feel no such thing with Greek bankers) because the more you can push back against predation, the stronger we will be when they come for us. “An injury to one is an injury to all” remains the iron law of social transformation.

(Photo by Yannis Kolesidis/EPA)

These are refugees on the Macedonian-Greek border where they will try to catch a train to Serbia & move on to northern European countries if they are able to traverse the razor wire fence put up by Hungary at the Serbian border. Thousands of refugees are trekking through the Balkans. Military & covert operations & economic plunder by the US & European regimes in league with reactionary regimes have completely undone several countries in the Middle East & Africa (& the Americas) & created one of the most colossal breakdowns & refugee crises since WWII.

According to Amnesty International estimates, the number of refugees apprehended trying to cross the Serbia-Hungary border increased from 2,370 in 2010 to 60,602 this year. Apprehended & not allowed to move on because Hungary (an EU member) is now functioning as proxy EU immigration control in the way Greece did before SYRIZA (& in the way Greece is certain to again under Troika austerity). The Hungarian parliament recently passed legislation tightening asylum rules. Those able to enter Hungary are abused by authorities, arrested & placed in overcrowded squalid conditions.

Their treatment in Macedonia & Serbia is not better. In fact, Amnesty accuses the Balkan regimes of abusing refugees passing through their territories in a replay of what Central American refugees face passing through Mexico: extortion & assault by both police authorities & criminal gangs. Last month Serbian authorities arrested 29 police officers & nine customs officials for accepting bribes to let refugees pass into Hungary. What likely rankled the regime was not the extortion & corruption but allowing refugees safe passage.

Refugees report being pushed, slapped, kicked, & beaten by Serbian police near the Hungarian border. An Afghan refugee told Amnesty they witnessed a pregnant woman being beaten. They are also arrested without legal recourse or the possibility of asylum in either country. Serbia gave refugee status to one person in 2014 & Macedonia to only ten. One Amnesty official called the Balkans a “no-man’s land” for refugees. And you can bet your bottom dollar both regimes are operating in league with the EU from which they derive no benefits.

Immigration is a human right–a right writ large in human history. Open the damn borders!

(Photo by Robert Atanasovski/AFP/Getty)

There’s little to say about Sinead O’Connor’s unsavory attack on Kim Kardashian. Her vile, misogynist choice of language is regrettable. Her analysis that Rolling Stone killed music misses the entire point of profiteering in music. Is it inappropriate to bring up that she nearly played apartheid Israel for a massive, inflated fee & was quite belligerent in her cancellation?

The runner-up in Donald Trump’s Miss USA pageant was Miss Texas, a woman of Mexican ancestry from here in McAllen. She arrived home today to media applause for ignoring all that conflict around Trump. There’s big money in those pageants; that’s how they convince many women to participate in them. One could ask of this young woman, what price dignity!? But it must be said, most Americans are far removed from their immigrant ancestors & don’t identify in solidarity or insult.

Part of the problem in understanding what’s going on in Greece is that they’re using the language of war: euphemisms. So media tells us that ‘before receiving the €86 billion euro loan package from European institutions, the Greek parliament must approve a catalog of budget cuts & economic reforms, including tax hikes, spending cuts, pension reforms, privatization.’ When you translate that gobbledy-gook, what it means is that European banks will rescue Greek capitalism (for the moment anyway) from the bankruptcy mess it’s in because capitalism doesn’t work, even on paper. The bailout is no solution, but just a stop-gap method to prevent collapse.

And the way the Troika intends to do that is a frontal assault on working people. In the proposals, farmers will lose fuel subsidies; the retirement age will be raised to 67 & early retirements (usually for medical reasons) will be denied; medical costs for pensioners will increase, when already nearly 50% live below poverty levels; public sector workers will face wage & benefit cuts; collective bargaining rights will be abridged; a revamped tax agency will be hunting down tax evaders–by which they don’t mean the millionaires stashing money in Swiss bank accounts but ordinary working people; unemployment which is already massive will increase & tens of thousands will be forced to leave the country for work; homelessness which was over 50,000 people three years ago will go through the roof–& many of them will be elderly & children. Anyone who has experienced the terror of homelessness knows it scrambles the brain in a phenomenon akin to PTSD–& that is particularly so for small children.

They’re also going to be privatizing which means a fire sale on state assets like utilities, airports, sea ports. And of course privatization includes health care, education, social services of all kinds.
What we’re looking at is a bank bailout & a war against working people couched in the language of reforms. They claim military spending will be slashed but you can file that under fat chance because coercion will be fundamental to implementing these “reforms.” The only thing that will be increased is the military budget.

We don’t have to speculate on what this might mean for Greek working people. We can look at Mexico, the Philippines, every Central American country, Brazil, Peru, every African country where neoliberal scorched earth economics has left millions of working people impoverished & dispossessed.

We are looking at neoliberal economics, the reign of terror under the barbaric phase of capitalism. And we need decide if we think human beings are on this earth to serve mammon & an elite handful of predators or for the pursuit of health & happiness for all of us.
Our fullest solidarity with Greek working people.

(Photo by Emilio Morenatti/AP)

Now here the Guardian-UK goes being sleazy again. There’s likely no country in the world that has more martial displays than the US. Military bands & formations are so chock-a-block in St. Patrick’s Day & 4th of July parades that they outnumber high school bands by a long-shot. It’s all about celebrating & strutting military might. And the same looks true for the UK & India.

But when media really want to scare the bejeezus out of us, they show photos of the goose-stepping North Korean army, the Russian army strutting in Red Square, ISIS formations tearing through Iraq & Syria, & the al-Qassam Brigades on parade in Gaza. The Guardian caption to this photo identified it as “the marine unit of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, taking part in an anti-Israel parade” in Rafah, Gaza Strip.

They can’t show pictures of military parades in Israel since they reportedly stopped holding them in 1973 for financial reasons. But they still hold annual weapons exhibitions & it must be quite a display since the US Pentagon arms them to the teeth with the most sophisticated weaponry.

The al-Qassam Brigades held another parade last December, just a few months after the cessation of Israeli carpet bombing. Israeli media claims these military displays are a show of strength, attempts at psychological warfare against Israel. The fellows here are naval commandos. Their swimming goggles & flippers & even their guns shouldn’t be that intimidating to a military that has bombers, tanks, naval ships, electronic surveillance systems, guided missiles, that impressive Iron Dome, & an active army of 176,500 personnel with a reserve force of 445,000.

Quite frankly, these Hamas parades may be less directed at Israel, where there is no possible military parity, than at Palestinians & their children who must be sustaining massive PTSD from 51-days of bombardment. Trauma of such a scale takes years to resolve. Helping people regain psychological equilibrium & not feel like a target is a worthy purpose for parading naval commandos & rocket units because if Palestinians are to survive in Gaza against genocidal sieges & the blockade, they need a fighting spirit, a sense they are not sitting ducks for Israeli bombers.

They also need political solidarity, to know they no longer stand alone in one of the most important anti-colonial struggles in the world. That solidarity is best rendered by building the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott (BDS) of Israel.

(Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Paul Krugman, the NY Times columnist, nailed Donald Trump as a “belligerent, loudmouth racist with not an ounce of compassion for less fortunate people.” So uncouth, so lowbrow, so unlike Krugman who for 20 years has written effete & urbane odes to sweatshops. If you’re gonna be a racist, you ought at least do it with class.

(Photo of Krugman)