History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

In 1984, there was a toxic gas explosion at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. The accident was due to neglect of equipment & safety maintenance in order to save money & caused the pesticide plant to leak toxic gas into the city, killing an estimated 25,000 people, injuring half a million, & contaminating the environment & water supply. Union Carbide, a US-owned company, became a subsidiary of Dow Chemical in 2001.

Dow has refused to contain chemical efflux from that explosion all these years which has poisoned the underground water reservoirs. Over 30,000 people still live nearby due to extreme poverty & are forced to drink, bathe, & cook with contaminated water which has created new generations of children suffering chemically-induced illness & serious neurological & physical disabilities & disfigurements–not unlike what the children of Iraq have suffered from US chemical warfare.

The explosion is considered quite justly as one of the world’s worst industrial accidents because the damage is ongoing & unremitting. It is also without question one of the worst cases in the world of legal malfeasance & injustice because attempts to force Dow to clean up the environment & provide compensation to the victims have been manhandled in Indian & US courts.

Dow has refused to appear before Indian courts to face criminal charges from the accident. And in June 2012, in a grotesque case of the wolf guarding the chicken house, a US court absolved Dow of all liability in the Bhopal disaster–which means they are not liable for compensation, remediation or pollution-related claims. Dow was the primary peddler of Agent Orange, the defoliate used by the US military in Vietnam that caused numerous health problems & death among veterans & their offspring & continuing, catastrophic health problems for the people of Vietnam. The US court may have been trying to shield Dow & the US government from an avalanche of litigation from Vietnam as well as from victims in Iraq.

It wasn’t clear how civil & criminal litigation against Dow could proceed after the 2012 ruling or if legal recourse had been exhausted. Now a FB friend & Bhopal activist in India from the Bhopal Group for Information & Action has notified me that a Bhopal court has issued four court notices to Dow since 2014 in criminal litigation against the company.

Dow is ignoring these notices to appear before the Indian court making it a fugitive from justice & in legal maneuvers which violate the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the US & India, the US Department of Justice is running legal interference on behalf of Dow. Activists charge the US government with actively aiding Dow in evading criminal charges.

The latest petition from the Bhopal court demands Dow representatives appear before it on July 13 2016 to answer criminal charges. To force Dow & the US government to respond as required by law, Bhopal activists will be launching a petition this coming Sunday to obtain 100,000 signatures in one month. Time & political support are of the essence.

It’s over 32 years since the Union Carbide explosion & Bhopal activists have become a model of relentless pursuit of justice, including campaigning to have Dow removed as a sponsor of the 2012 Olympics in London & constant protests & memorials demanding justice.

When the petition is posted on Sunday both on FB & onhttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov/, please consider signing, sharing, & widely distributing on Twitter, FB, & wherever you think it can get support. US citizens have a particular responsibility for addressing the evils of our government & the corporations that rule it but people from around the world are needed to force justice from the US government.

(Photo from FB wall of Roshen Chandran, a Bhopal activist)

Ignoring the political ruins of their party, Republican leaders are trying to lend some dignity to the Drumpf campaign but it’s out of control. Showboating artist Spencer Tunick is planning an installation of 100 naked women outside the convention in July. A group of rightwing whackos in India are holding fire rituals to pray for Drumpf’s victory. And still nothing compares to the candidate himself talking about the size of his private parts.

Will the oligarchy ever be able to restore dignity to US elections? Or is burlesque the new norm? In the surreal world of lesser evil politics, Drumpf is shaping up to be just that. Pardon if it’s impossible not to laugh.

The London anti-corruption conference hosted by David Cameron bombed out exactly like anyone with half a brain could have predicted. Heads of state, ministers, & diplomats from forty countries attended the conference on high-level tax evasion, tax havens, money-laundering & bribery–probably as a response to revelations in the Panama Papers & more likely to figure out if their financial criminality is in any way going to be threatened.

The conference issued a “Global Declaration Against Corruption” that was singular in its banality: “Corruption should be exposed–ensuring there is nowhere to hide; The corrupt should be pursued & punished & those who have suffered from corruption fully supported; Corruption should be driven out–wherever it may exist.” You’d think the diplomats would be sweating bullets but they understand just as well as we do that this thing is all a dog & pony show, signifying zilch.

Where one stands on the struggle between Israel & the Palestinians is a touchstone in world politics raising all of the most important questions, particularly the question of colonialism. Zionism, the political ideology of Israeli colonialism, emerged in the 19th century at the apogee of European & US colonialism as a rightwing response to pogroms & persecution of Jews. Rather than link the struggle of Jews to the broader movements against colonialism, Zionist supremacists threw in their lot with barbaric colonialism.

Neither World War I or II was fought over democracy (as is pounded into our heads by war propagandists) but were conflicts between colonial powers over dividing up the world, including Africa, Asia, & the Middle East. It’s no coincidence that after WWII, as colonized peoples were throwing off the shackles of foreign powers, that Israel received the backing of those same foreign powers in colonizing Palestine & driving indigenous peoples off their lands into refugee camps.

Israel, at the expense of Palestinians, is an armed fortress, not a nation, serving the continuation of colonialism & US-European economic & political domination throughout the Middle East. But despite its colonial origins, has it played a role in freeing Jews from persecution? Can Zionism at least claim that as an achievement? The answer depends on how you measure freedom.

Is it freedom that Israel is built on apartheid & is engaged in constant ethnic cleansing using carpet bombing & massive incarceration of Palestinians, including children? Is it freedom that they have to militarily occupy what’s left of Palestine using the most barbaric & violent methods, including an apartheid wall? Is it freedom that they have to manufacture a religious & political history & teach the manufactured people to lie about who they are? Is it freedom to build a society based on racist supremacism, to hate & wish death on Palestinians & persecute African refugees? Is it freedom that militarism is now synonymous with Israel & that it provides death squad training & armaments to the most reactionary regimes in the world? Is it freedom that a feature of Israel’s economic wealth is not just militarism but blood diamonds from plundered African countries?

It was recently reported in Haaretz that the primary cause of death among Israeli soldiers is suicide–more than the number of soldiers who died as a result of disease, traffic accidents, operational activity or other calamities. That’s been true for several years just as it is in the US military. Soldiers don’t always understand the racism & colonialism of wars they participate in & there aren’t sufficient social services to help them process their experience. But viscerally they are unable to cope with the barbarism they engage in under the banner of freedom.

In the US, antiwar veterans groups play a role in educating about war & in helping veterans process the horrors of what they did & saw. In Israel, the veterans group Breaking the Silence plays a similar role despite being vilified as collaborators with the regime. These veterans stand as testimony to Israel as an armed fortress incapable of freeing Jews from persecution but of placing them in harm’s way to serve international economic & political ends at the expense of Palestinians, Jews, & peoples throughout the Middle East.

That’s why the struggle of Israel against Palestinians is a touchstone in world politics. If you stand on the wrong side of solidarity, you stand with the wretched heritage & neoliberal designs of colonialism.

Stand with the Palestinians by building & honoring the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel.

The photo is Palestinians standing behind the apartheid barrier at Rafah on the Egyptian border waiting for family to return. The Egyptian government which collaborates with Israel opened the border crossing for a few days to allow people from Gaza to get medical care & buy provisions not available in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade. Not coincidentally, Israeli soldier suicides spiked after the recent military incursion into Gaza by land & aerial bombardment.

(Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Sadiq Khan is getting a lot of mileage out of being the son of a bus driver. If working class had such cache here I’d enter every room announcing myself as the daughter of an electrician. Who knew plebeian was the new status symbol in liberal politics!?

Everybody was so excited here because the first no-kill animal shelter was opening up. Animal lovers tend to keep found animals or relinquish them to small home-based rescue operations rather than hand them to the main shelter that euthanizes 70,000 a year.

Now a rescue pal tells me that according to her vet the new shelter is only technically no-kill & will outsource the animals to be euthanized. It’s likely many will still end up as victims of experimentation in medical & veterinary schools. Such a disappointment after such excitement!

There have recently been several analyses of Democratic Party voting patterns–all reporting growing liberalization. That’s no great revelation but vetting the methodology used would be essential here: who were they polling? what were the issues they asked about? where did they find people who identify with the DP? Because the DP isn’t really a membership organization; it’s an electoral apparatus that puts forth candidates who others vote for. Those voters do not meet to democratically decide the politics or the candidates of the DP; that’s all done by an elite behind closed doors with a retinue of hacks & hangers-on as enforcers.

Such a powerful photo of a protesting mother in Kashmir in front of a photo montage of those disappeared by the Indian military. Losing a beloved to disappearance or violence of any kind is not a wound that heals with time. Disappearing people is an absolutely monstrous crime against the victim, his/her family & friends, & humanity as a whole.

Disappearing seems to be a primary weapon of repression under neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, & is practiced in nearly 50 countries. In every one of them, these photo montages are created to show how personal this crime against humanity is felt. These montages will be displayed till justice is attained–a mission yet to be achieved anywhere. In some countries they have been displayed for decades.

London’s new mayor Sadiq Khan is turning out to be a real loser. He staunchly opposes BDS & supports Israel but he’s also something of a dope who’s vowed to help Clinton defeat Drumpf. By getting all the people in England to vote for her?

He’s rip-snorting mad because Drumpf’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US would prevent his two teenage daughters from visiting Disneyland. The Syrian refugee crisis must have gone right over his head if that’s his chief objection.

He also would “love” to see Clinton win because he cannot imagine a better role model for his 14 & 16-year-old girls. No one is a better role model than a war-monger who grovels & shills for power & whose highest achievement was turning Haiti into a sweatshop haven? With such a stunted imagination he makes a perfect complement to Cameron & Betty.