One of the cagiest forms of socializing & acculturating to racism & misogyny in a society is through humor. That’s Charlie Hebdo’s schtick. But satire truly is the genre of the oppressed, a way to change power relationships through ridicule. It’s a very democratic form of protest because in tyrannical societies it can get you beheaded or exiled. When satire & ridicule are used against the oppressed by the power elite, it becomes something quite different with a contemptible dynamic of teaching inferiority & social hatred.

Redneck is an epithet in US culture for a white working class reactionary. Some consider it derogatory of working people. Since I have relatives who fit the bill, I’m not that sensitive. It aptly describes a type.

The eruption of violent rhetoric directed at Muslims since San Bernardino is way beyond redneck stuff but draws on the cesspools of fascism & includes the highest levels of power in this country. Even Islamophobia is too weak a word.

We had comments by Trump about special databases & id cards for Muslims & from Ben Carson that a Muslim could only be US president if he or she “renounced the tenets of Islam.” It took the FBI one day to conclude on the basis of a shred of evidence that the shootings were Muslim-related. Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of a right-wing religious college said “if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in.” Presidential candidate & former NY governor George Pataki tweeted “We must declare war on radical Islam. @Loretta Lynch I’m not edging toward violent speech, I’m declaring we kill them. Go ahead, arrest me.” FB is filled with memes declaring we kill Muslims before they kill us.

On a post I did about the xenophobia & criminality of Judge Jeanine Pirro, I got hit with an avalanche of right-wingers. Usually I have no problems with a public wall but anti-Muslim sentiment is riding high right now & loudmouths & the deranged apparently identify with it. They seem to communicate only in CAPS & memes.

Why they’re incensed enough to evangelize on my wall beats me. I come from a family of right-wingers & I’ve never understood the psychology. Or is it a pathology? I’ll likely hit the grave before I’ve grasped its inner essence. At least I hope so.

There appears to be a slight change in media editorial policy where the struggle in Kashmir actually gets mentioned occasionally–though there was some coverage of the massive floods last year, the possible regeneration of the country as a tourist destination, & beef smuggling since India banned eating beef–ostensibly because cows are sacred to Hindus but really as a way to impose restrictions on & persecute Muslims & other religions who do eat beef. (This post is not about the merits of vegetarianism but about democratic rights.)

We’re led to believe that refugees from Pakistan, Iran, Morocco & other places in north Africa, who are being stopped at the Macedonia/Greece border & prevented from moving north are mostly young men. Not that this should make a shred of difference to their rights of asylum, because historically immigration has always had such gender imbalances–for the obvious reason that it’s dangerous for women to travel anywhere in this world unarmed or without male protection.

One exception to this was the large numbers of unaccompanied Irish women & girl immigrants traveling to the US at the turn of the 20th century. Another one is the massive numbers of young Central American women with children now crossing the US/Mexico border to find asylum.

Twenty-four hours ago the FBI said they had no clue what motivated the San Bernardino shootings & it would be a lengthy process to comb through social media & other evidence to learn. Now, on the basis of a single pro-ISIS posting on Facebook by the woman shooter, they’re zeroing in on terrorism as the motive. Is that the scientific method?

Anybody else get the impression that a narrative is being constructed to fit a purpose? Because when the FBI has investigated crimes like the murder of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, & other victims in the Black community, it took months & sometimes years. Is this not a rush to judgement but rather a deception? Because to be persuasive it will take a lot more than a Facebook post.

Disappointing to see my favorite actress Juliet Stevenson playing Mother Teresa in a biopic film likely to be hagiography. It may seem blasphemous to not hold Mother Teresa in high esteem but nobody holy who stands next to dictators with their hands in a prayerful pose is believable. Nor certainly holy.

There’s plenty of scholarship now about Mother Teresa, including the derivative (if not outright plagiarized) book by Christopher Hitchens called “The Missionary Position.” She’s an icon, not of service to the poor nor certainly of opposing inequality, but of ennobling suffering–as if poverty was a punishment for some presumed mortal offenses under the rubrics of Catholicism. She was also a fraud who served the poor in deplorable conditions & never made an accounting of millions of dollars donated for her work.

Sweatshop economics are central to neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism. Multinational corporations save not billions, but trillions getting workers to produce goods for chump change & selling them for big bucks. A blouse made by a sweatshop worker overseas for one US buck can sell for $350 in an upscale US shop–making a chump out of the consumer as well.

Of course, while the garment industry is dominated by sweatshops, that isn’t the only product they produce. Everything from toys to underwear to shoes to high-tech electronics & machine parts come out of them. At Christmas time, “Santa’s little helper” is a child worker in a sweatshop.

A sweatshop by its very definition is a workshop with low unfair wages, long unreasonable hours, dangerous working conditions, & absolutely no labor rights. Female & child labor are central to the system. That’s precisely what makes them so appealing to modern capitalists & why they’re spreading like a virus all over the planet.

After the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2013 & growing political organization among garment workers, the sweatshop economy had a problem on its hands. A public relations problem. The sweatshop economy includes retailers, sweatshop owners, US, European, Japanese, & other governments that broker free trade agreements with governments like Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, China, Haiti, & umpteen other nations.

Media is now on a criminal campaign to salvage the image of sweatshops by reconstructing reality with big fat lies. We’re used to that from hacks like Nicholas Kristof & Paul Krugman from the NY Times who cover their treachery with sentimental crap about women’s rights. Using women’s rights to promote war, sweatshop economics, prostitution, child labor is the way of the world under neoliberal capitalism.

This week many media sources are touting the photojournalist album of Claudio Montesano Casillas covering what they call the “informal garment sector.” Casillas postures himself as a naif who happened across unregulated & unregistered garment factories in Bangladesh & documented them to evoke outrage.

He says there are an estimated 7,000 informal factories in Bangladesh–although how the hell he knows that is not explained. If he got the figure from the Bangladeshi government, that means they know these hellholes exist. Casillas says–& media repeats with a straight face–that working conditions in the informal export-oriented factories are much worse than formal export-oriented factories. They’re more dangerous, lower paid, require longer hours, & have more kids working in them. But the conditions he chronicles are identical to those in allegedly regulated factories.

To make the case, they quote the Bangladeshi inspector general of factories who claims 80 percent of Bangladesh’s garment factories which supply global retailers have been inspected & found to be safe “though he acknowledged that many needed work on fire safety & electrical systems.” Sometimes you want to cry when you realize how stupid they think we are.

Bangladesh is making a killing on sweatshop economics & child labor. The number of billionaires has tripled in the past few years. Conditions of labor, including for children, in brick factories, shipyards, tanneries, & other industries is an international horror showcasing the consequences of sweatshop economics. You don’t drag Bangladeshi government officials out to make sweatshops look good anymore than you drag out a Pentagon general to talk peace.

Sweatshops are a scourge for women & children. The organization of working people into labor organizations to advance their interests is a primary task around this world–& one which young people should consider committing their lives to.

This little guy is a garment worker in a blue jeans factory–one of the ‘unregulated looks just like the regulated’ kind.

(Photo by Claudio Montesano Casillas)

It’s been 31 years since the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India leaked toxic gas into the city, killing an estimated 25,000, injuring half a million, & contaminating the environment & water supply. The leak, which went on from December 2nd to 3rd, 1984, was caused by neglect of safety systems to save money & is still considered one of the world’s worst industrial accidents.

US-based Dow Chemical is now the owner of Union Carbide. Those who are veterans of the anti-Vietnam War movement remember Dow as the producer of napalm & Agent Orange–both used in the war. Napalm is an incendiary weapon used to burn people to death after excruciating pain. Agent Orange is a defoliate containing dioxin that caused at least 24 different health symptoms & death among veterans & their offspring–& continuing catastrophic health problems for the people of Vietnam. At the time it was used by the Pentagon in Vietnam, it was banned in several countries; Dow knew full well of the toxic properties of dioxin. That’s the kind of pathology the people of Bhopal are up against.