The cock-eyed perspective of Islamophobia

It’s an interesting phenomenon–also troubling–that social & political problems in Arab countries are attributed to Islam & not the feudal monarchs or military juntas that rule them. Why aren’t US wars, the former military juntas in Latin America, the repressive regimes in Mexico, Central America, & elsewhere attributed to Christianity? Why isn’t the EU allowing thousands of refugees to drown in the Mediterranean also attributed to Christian theology? In fact, why isn’t all of neoliberal capitalism attributed to Christianity?

Mexican journalists protest murder of Ruben Espinosa

Guadalajara Ruben Espinosa protest (AFP:Getty Images) August 4 2015

One can only stand in awe of these Mexican journalists defiantly holding up photos of murdered colleague Ruben Espinosa at a protest in Guadalajara City on August 2nd. Not just in Guadalajara, but thousands of defiant journalists, human rights activists, family & friends also rallied in Mexico City where Espinosa was brutally murdered & in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, which Espinosa fled in June because of surveillance, harassment, & because his life was being threatened. He had been beaten by police in 2013.

Mexico has one of the highest murder rates in the world for journalists; the state of Veracruz is considered the deadliest for journalists. According to Reporters Without Borders, 88 journalists have been murdered across Mexico since 2000; according the the rights group Article 19, seventeen have been killed in Veracruz & 37 have fled the state in fear for their lives since 2000. Eleven, including Espinosa, have been killed there since 2010, all during the administration of Governor Javier Duarte.

Espinosa worked for the investigative magazine Proceso & other media. He was tortured, bound, & shot in the head last Friday in his Mexico City apartment along with outspoken human rights activist Nadia Vera & three other women including the housekeeper.

In February, an unflattering photo by Espinosa of Duarte appeared on the cover of Proceso with the headline “Veracruz, A State Without Law.” Many believe Duarte’s henchmen followed Espinosa to Mexico City & murdered him

It takes extraordinary courage for these journalists not to back down or run for the border but to stand defiant. Our deepest respect & fullest solidarity.

(Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen to destroy popular revolution

Yemen graffiti on Saudi embassy (Yahya Arhab:EPA) August 4 2015

The Saudi-led coalition of feudal monarchies & military dictatorships bombing the hell out of Yemen for now nearly six months claim it’s all about the “Shiite Houthi rebels” in Yemen. It appears from Syria, Iraq, & now Yemen, that the US & reactionary Arab regimes prefer prolonged civil war to popular democratic revolutions. The intent is to destroy every vestige of the massive uprisings against oppressive regimes.

Yemen is beginning to look like Gaza & Syria after months of bombing. That not only shows the barbaric lengths reactionary regimes are willing to go but expresses how profound their fear of popular democracy. Estimates are that 3,000 people have been killed in the bombing, but let’s get real–the US, which has been drone bombing in Yemen for years, & its Saudi-led allies have never considered the lives of those being bombed anywhere of enough value to actually tabulate.

Graffiti played a big role in the Yemen uprising of 2011, even after the mass protests declined. In an extraordinary act of courage, this Yemeni activist is putting anti-Saudi war graffiti on the wall of the Saudi embassy in Sanaa.

The greatest political need is to rebuild the international antiwar movement to stay the hand of military aggression before these deranged regimes turn the entire Middle East into a killing field.

Our deepest respect for this activist; our fullest solidarity with the people of Yemen.

(Photo by Yahya Arhab/EPA)

Obama regime grooms African misleaders

Obama at YALI Network 2015

Shortly before the end of apartheid in South Africa, I was invited to a conference in Boston of South African students in the US who I was told were anti-apartheid activists. It turned out the students were all studying here on US State Department fellowships. As the conference went on, I realized they were being groomed by the US government as Black leadership after apartheid ended & I realized that because it was expressed in different ways by many of the participants. It didn’t bode well that at the panel on women’s rights, most of the participants got up & left–for which they were soundly berated by the women panelists.

Now the news is all about Obama addressing the Young African Leaders Summit (YALI) & its flagship program the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF). Obama started YALI in 2010 to “connect the next generation of entrepreneurs, educators, activists, & innovators with resources from the US Government.” The MWF, which YALI began in 2014, brings 500 young Africans to the US every year “for academic coursework & leadership training & will create unique opportunities in Africa for Fellows to put new skills to practical use in leading organizations, communities, & countries.”

Translated from double-talk that means the US government is cultivating & grooming an elite cadre of collaborators who will endorse neoliberal economic policies in their own countries, US & European military interventions, & in return will have status, privilege, wealth–the ‘same old same old’ of capitalism & colonialism.

There are other forces in Africa who see right through this cooptation of leadership, activists who don’t want to sell their souls for wealth & privilege but who want a decisive end to colonialism in all its forms in African countries. Those young African leaders will be forced to do political battle with the stooges groomed by the US State Department.

(Photo of Obama speaking to YALI summit 2015 from White House)

Whither the left goes on women’s liberation: only a fool would follow

Once again we are being urged to organize the annual Go Topless day on August 23rd (the closest Sunday to Women’s Equality Day on August 26th celebrating the right to vote in the US). Women & men are urged to go topless in public to stand up for women’s rights. This is a complete mockery of feminism & the fight for women’s liberation. The Go Topless organization was formed in 2007 & was certainly the inspiration for Slut Walks in 2011, another mockery of women’s struggle against oppression–then hailed by misguided radicals as the regeneration of feminism.

Go Topless is organized by men–as Slut Walks was in several cities. Go Topless organizers belong to the Raëlian Movement, a UFO religion founded in 1974 that teaches life on Earth was scientifically created by extraterrestrials. And their theology goes downhill from there. They want the swastika reclaimed as a symbol of peace which is why Israel refused them an embassy that would serve as a landing port for extraterrestrial spaceships. The country already has more nuts than it can handle.

All this crap would be fodder for satire if so damn many leftists didn’t go bananas for it over & over again. At what point will those who make claims to social criticism recognize nonsense when they see it? More importantly, at what point will they begin to take women’s fight against oppression seriously & stop confusing it with legitimizing porn & prostitution?

The neoliberal assault on labor

Bangladesh alumuninum worker (EPA:ABIR ABDULLAH) August 4 2015

One of the features of neoliberal economics is the systematic degradation of adult labor which is why there is such a global, massive increase in child labor. Trade union officials are incorporated into the power structure (using the old-fashioned corruptive methods of money & prestige); union organizing is harshly repressed; in many countries, union organizers & officials who cannot be corrupted are murdered. And the conditions of labor, especially safety conditions, are barbaric. Neoliberal economics are sweatshop economics–just a step above outright slavery.

This young man works in an aluminum factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh working dawn to dusk with no safety equipment for about 30 euro (US $33) a week. According to reports, most of the workers at the aluminum factory lost their homes due to river erosion & flooding & moved to the city for odd jobs. The aluminum factory is something of a death warrant for the workers. It doesn’t provide them a decent life; it barely provides them survival.

They’ve known for over 100 years how toxic aluminum is to human life. It isn’t biologically needed by the body in any amount but is pumped into our systems through cookware, antacids, aluminum cans, antiperspirants, cosmetics, water, foodstuffs (like baking powder), hemodialysis. Imagine then the amounts these workers are ingesting in processing the metal without any safety & protective equipment.

Aluminum is not easily metabolized & eliminated from the body but accumulates mainly in tissues of the lungs, liver, heart, spleen, thyroid, muscle, bone & brain. It is implicated in many serious metabolic, neurological, & behavioral disorders including Alzheimer’s Disease, changes in brain anatomy, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, anemia, blood disorders, colic, colitis, digestive disturbances, dental caries, headaches, hypoparathyroidism, liver & kidney dysfunctions, neuromuscular disorders, osteomalacia, Parkinson’s Disease, loss of coordination, dementia, & learning difficulties. All that for less than 50 cents an hour!

In many countries the US labor officialdom operates in collusion with the US State Department & even the CIA to maintain these oppressed conditions of labor; foundations like the George Soros foundations drown the union officials in money to corrupt them. This is another case of chickens coming home to roost because part of the deal for the US union officials is keeping American workers groveling to the power elite & that ain’t working out for working people anywhere.

There needs to be a day of reckoning with the present union officialdom through the fight for democracy within the labor movement. That will be killing two monsters with one stone by advancing the interests of US workers & getting the malignant alliance of CIA-labor officials-State Department off the backs of workers in Bangladesh & elsewhere.

Our fullest solidarity with these aluminum workers. Our commitment is to make that day of reckoning soon because “an injury to one is an injury to all” truly is the clarion call of justice.

(Photo by Abir Abdullah/EPA)

Media’s endless insinuations against Palestinians to cover for Israeli apartheid

Funeral of Laith al-Khaldi (REUTERS:Mohamad Torokman) August 3 2015

One wonders how long the Guardian-UK & other media think they can continue covering up Israeli apartheid–including carpet bombing in Gaza & the aggressive settlement projects in the West Bank–with insinuations against Palestinians? In the caption to this photo they said the confrontation here “was one of three in a matter of hours in which Palestinians died from Israeli-Palestinian violence.”

“Israeli-Palestinian violence” is the term they use for Israeli military occupation; an occupation that uses tear gas grenades, stink bombs, raw sewage spray, tanks, bulldozers, live ammo against unarmed Palestinians trying to defend their families & ancestral lands & homes.

At this confrontation the young Palestinian allegedly threw a molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers. Soldiers fired at him after he threw the fire-bomb. That is, they fired at the back of an unarmed man running away. For what purpose? The photo is quite clear: he only hit the tank; the soldiers are standing there unharmed. The Guardian doesn’t bother to report if he was killed or injured.

The bigger issue is that the West Bank is being illegally occupied; the soldiers have no right to be there & Palestinians have every right in the world to resist Israeli military violence by any means necessary. That is not Palestinian violence. It is a struggle for freedom against a brutal, murderous occupation that is uprooting entire villages, confiscating farm lands, killing people–young & old, & incarcerating thousands so Israel can move in settlers from all over the world to claim what is left of Palestine as the Jewish homeland.

The worst part of this confrontation is that Israel moved in tanks & troops during the funeral of Laith al-Khaldi, the 18-year-old they summarily executed while he was protesting the arson murder of baby Ali Dawabsheh. The funeral was in a refugee camp near Ramallah. Media reports tensions have increased since the death of baby Ali. What media means is that the barbarisms of Israeli occupation are being exposed for all the world to see–so they have to report the violence as though it were an even-steven thing.

From the Palestinian point of view, tensions have never decreased since 1948 when Zionist terrorists began driving them off their lands. And tensions will not end until Palestinian self-determination is won with a democratic secular state where Jews & Palestinians can live in harmony–& the monstrous dystopia of a Jewish-only colony is ended.

Build the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel.

(Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)