Behind defiance against tyranny is the grief: Today thousands chanting pro-freedom slogans attended the funeral of activist Bilal Ahmad Bhat in Kashmir. Israel tries to prevent such protests by refusing to return the bodies of those it has executed. This young Bahraini man cries during the funeral of 18-year-old Ali Abdulghani attended by thousands chanting slogans & holding up posters with the picture of young Ali.

Reports don’t identify what the repressive Bahraini regime accused Abdulghani of doing but he was on the run after being sentenced to five years in prison–almost certainly for protesting since his mother was released from prison just a few weeks ago. When police & masked men cornered him at his aunt’s house, he fled.

When the history/obituary of the neoliberal era is finally written, media will require special condemnations just as it merits a special place in hell.

Documentation for that claim (if any were needed): Yahoo identifies these men as Afghan & Pakistani “refugees” (& yes, inexplicably it used that term instead of “migrants”) protesting at the Moria detention center against their imminent deportation to Turkey. Although both Afghans & Pakistanis are being denied asylum as “economic migrants,” both are war refugees. Or does the EU deny years of US drone bombing in Pakistan & nearly 15 years of US-European occupation & bombing in Afghanistan?

This Pakistani refugee is threatening to hang himself from a utility pole during a demonstration inside the Moria “registration center” on the Greek island of Lesbos. That’s what the Reuters caption says. Are we to think this man is simply overwrought & melodramatic?

Moria is not a registration center. It is a concentration camp where Afghans, Pakistanis, & other refugees deemed “economic migrants” are incarcerated in overcrowded, dehumanizing conditions without sanitation, healthcare, sleeping quarters. The conditions are so squalid that Doctors Without Borders pulled out, not wanting to be implicated in the barbarism, & perhaps not wanting their personnel to be beaten or bombarded with tear gas by riot cops along with the refugees. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency hasn’t been there much anyway but they pulled out so they could pretend it wasn’t happening to cover for the EU.

These are homeless children in Manila, Philippines, where it is matter-of-factly stated that a quarter of the country’s 98 million people live below the poverty line of one US dollar a day. In fact, last year the World Bank, in an act of inexplicable largesse, raised the poverty line to $1.90 a day using 2011 prices.

We could ask the World Bank to explain their actuarial calculations: like, why a measly $1.90 & why 2011 prices? But what’s the point when their poverty line hasn’t a shred of relationship to reality? What’s the point when their policies have created most of this poverty & they remain indifferent to it? They’re too preoccupied stuffing money into those Panama trusts.