It seems many think Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte is going after drug mafias to take them down with police action. Even drug barons & money-laundering bankers deserve due process in a democratic & civilized society.

But they are not who Duterte is going after. He is gunning down drug addicts & small-time drug hustlers, most of whom have been dispossessed & impoverished by high-stakes neoliberal rural & urban policies. He is going after poor people who need health care, housing, & jobs, not summary execution.

He is a monster, a thug, & a vigilante. His actions are to be condemned.

More high drama at the G20 meeting in China: Chinese leaders have been accused of a calculated diplomatic snub to Obama by not providing him with landing stairs for his plane & a red carpet even though they provided them to other criminal dignitaries, including Modi, Putin, Temer, & May.

Obama had the indignity of using a little-used exit in the belly of Air Force One with no rolling staircase & red carpet. Who knew there was such protocol in getting off a damn airplane? But US & Chinese officials nearly came to fisticuffs over the issue.

And the snub continues. Here our man Obama is sitting pouting & still neglected by Chinese officials. Have they seated him alone at a state banquet? Or are they just questioning his visa?

This is no way for a commander-in-chief with 1,000 US military bases all over the world & nuclear warheads directed at China to be treated. Color the American citizenry outraged. Once we get over rolling on the floor laughing.

(Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

High melodrama at the G20 (Gang of 20) meeting in Hangzhou, China. This is Putin & Obama at G20 putting on their mad faces for dramatic affect. We know the look so well from all the times Obama does his mad face routine with Netanyahu. But the pipeline of military aid to Israel keeps rolling no matter how many evil eyes Obama gives.

In July, the US proposed military collaboration with Russia in Syria against one of the paramilitary forces, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra group. That would effectively & openly put the US & Russia both on the side of Assad & buttress his dictatorship. Reality has a way of making fools of those who apply formulae & don’t systematically evaluate what the hell is going on. Behind the evil eye between Putin & Obama there are political footsies.

G20 is an annual meeting of leaders from the dominant capitalist economies along with the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, European Union & select invitees of dictators & other disreputable elements. Just a few of the most unsavory include Obama, Putin, Erdogan, Modi, Merkel, Pena Nieto (Mexico), Theresa May (UK), Salman Al Saud (Saudi Arabia), Temer (Brazil), al-Sisi (Egypt).

Capitalism is a competitive system spiraling into crises & G20 is a desperate measure, a way of feigning collaboration to save the system. File that under snow balls chance in hell.

(Photo by Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images)

Today truckers unions with lorries & tractors, local farmers, shop keepers, harbor workers, police, & the mayor of Calais, France began blockading roads leading to the entrance to the Channel crossing. They’re demanding France dismantle the squalid camp of 10,000 refugees mostly from African countries camped there for access to the crossing to England. The truckers, et al, are calling on the townspeople of Calais to join them.

Lorry unions organizing the blockades claim drivers are being attacked by refugees, that ‘rioting” refugees are setting fire to lorries, that gangs of armed traffickers & refugees are forcing lorries to stop so refugees can break in. Farmers claim they’re doing damage to their fields–whether by stealing produce, setting up tents, or taking a whiz & a poop isn’t specified.

Those removed from interaction with working class people & who may even suspect most of them of low intellect will try to do an intersectional alibi here for the vicious racism & xenophobia involved. There will be heart-wrenching explanations of economic stress among working people forcing them to buy into divide & conquer crap against refugees & immigrants. Cry me a river!

People don’t have to agree with a word Marx says but that “workers of the world unite” stuff is practical politics, not high-flown melodrama.The jamokes gathered at these blockades are among the best paid workers in the entire class, not the downtrodden unemployed or under-employed earning minimum wage, under-the-table spare change or scrounging for tips at dangerous jobs. The truckers think they’re better than those African refugees & are letting governments play them for chumps in the divide & conquer game.

Intersectional pity for the truckers, my ass! They should be condemned & massively counter-protested as not speaking for working people but only for white nationalists & other rightwing boneheads. They have as much access to information as everybody else & if they choose to side with racism & nationalism against refugee rights then tough noogies for their idiocies. They will have to be politically opposed & defeated.

All they have to do in solidarity is allow refugees to board their lorries to cross the channel & stand with human rights activists demanding that “Immigration is a human right. Open the damn borders.”

(Photo of blockade from Reuters)

Have been trying to understand how antiwar forces can be so divided on Syria, with some using antiwar ardency to support Assad & Russian & other foreign military intervention on his behalf–even sending peace delegations to Russia as though it were the motherland of freedom & peace delegations to meet Assad as though he weren’t a murderous dictator.

Then there are those who oppose Assad’s dictatorship but are campaigning for a No Fly Zone imposed & enforced by the US (when historically a NFZ is an act of war) & campaigning for Clinton as the candidate most likely to take military action against Assad.

My conclusion is that the political character of Assad, or for that matter Putin, are of no consequence to those who support him & they either employ deceit or cognitive dissonance to deny the criminality of both—most importantly the bombing of civilians using chemical & other kinds of condemned weaponry like barrel bombs.

Those who oppose Assad but look to the US Pentagon for emancipation need to have their heads examined & their understanding of history & political loyalties interrogated.

The worst defenders of Assad & Russia are socialists who drag out volumes of quotes from the archives on colonialism citing dead socialist theoreticians to justify their positions. No one can deny their archival skills but regrettably they don’t exhibit an iota of understanding about the complexities of what is going on in Syria.

The heart of the differences is conflicting understanding of the military & strategic goals of the US in Syria, as well as in Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan & the entire region. Supporters of Assad think it self-evident that the US is on a regime-change mission as in Iraq & Libya. If you’re paying any attention, it’s not self-evident at all. The only thing self-evident is that the US does not want powerful nation-states with dictators who are not house-trained by the Pentagon & with well-trained armies who can stand up to US hegemony.

So it’s true that regime change in Syria may well once have been a US military goal–& may be again. But the popular revolution against Assad which began in 2011 changed everything. Neither Assad nor the US & Russia can tolerate popular democratic movements which become beacons to suffering humanity around the world. The way Assad supporters deal with popular resistance against him is to deny it entirely & claim it’s all al-Qaeda.

One only need look at the US role in usurping the 2011 Egyptian democratic uprising against the military junta; at the massive US bombing of Yemen in 2011 & now the Saudi-led, UK & US-backed bombing to destroy the popular movement; at the Saudi, Pakistani, US, & UK role in destroying popular resistance in Bahrain. Not to mention the bankrolling of Israel against Palestinian resistance.

Eventually, the US may again prioritize regime change in Syria but for now its intention is to let Assad & Russia have military free rein to destroy every trace of popular revolution against Assad. That means the only possible antiwar response is not to cozy up to Assad & Putin but to stand firmly against all foreign intervention in Syria; to expose Assad’s political & war crimes; to give all possible assistance to the popular forces struggling to end dictatorship & war in Syria.

No to foreign military intervention in Syria must be the demand of international antiwar forces. No compromises with the Assad dictatorship.

This photo is a displaced Iraqi woman suffering emancipation US-style.

(Photo by Azad Lashkari/Reuters)

Makeshift tents on the premises of the old Athens airport & at rundown stadia from the 2004 Olympic games are EU accommodations for the estimated 60,000 refugees not yet deported to Turkey as part of the unsavory & criminal EU deal with that country. This family is living at the airport.

Since there’s a news blackout on the refugee crises, we don’t know what’s holding up the deportation process. The situation in Turkey with an attempted coup & the following crackdown by the Erdogan regime involving the incarceration of thousands without due process; Erdogan’s military forays against the Kurds & on the Syrian border: none of this makes Turkey a desirable place for relocation from the squalor of refugee camps in Greece.

There is a paperwork process involved where refugees can apply for asylum but most will be deported anyway & many nationalities, including Pakistanis & Afghans, are deported without the possibility of asylum.

Immigration is a human right. Asylum from war is mandated in international law. Open the damn borders.

(Photo by Yorgos Karahalis/AP)

The company Clinton keeps: Kissinger, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Clinton–all architects of several US wars going back to the Vietnam War.

But of course, if warplanes are to your mind the solution to intractable political problems, she’s definitely the candidate to vote for. She isn’t any kind of lesser evil & her populist rhetoric is already beginning to fray. But she is practiced at war & propping up dictatorships.

(Photo of the criminal lineup by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In response to international outrage over pellet injuries in Kashmir, the Indian government has approved PAVA grenades as an alternative to pellet guns–although it is not certain the Indian army will cease using pellet munitions since they’ve proven so effective in disabling & blinding.

In a move of unspeakable cynicism, India is portraying PAVA grenades as less non-lethal than pellet guns. No weapon is non-lethal when used against unarmed protesters & more importantly, no weapon is justified against unarmed protesters. Not in a democracy anyway.

These young people in Srinagar stand unarmed against soldiers armed to the teeth with truncheons, pellet guns, tear gas, stun grenades, live ammo.

Meanwhile media reports India is considering non-lethal weapons to replace non-lethal pellet munitions that have disabled, disfigured, & blinded at least 12 teenagers & kids every day for the 55 days of this siege. Why doesn’t the Indian army stop using it immediately if they know it’s doing such harm? And what about that live ammo? What’s so non-lethal about that?

This Twitter from Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), typifies the political Achilles Heel of that organization. HRW is an establishment NGO that will not condemn military action, including wars & occupation. but only suggest more humane ways to conduct them. How many humane ways are there to kill people who are unarmed?

In response to an article in the Washington Post that said “the Indian government is now looking for a new nonlethal weapon that can temporarily incapacitate violent mobs without causing permanent damage,” Roth tweeted “Surely India can find non-lethal option that doesn’t blind Kashmiris.”