Liberals blamed by crackpots for end of civilization

Everybody is denouncing the Democratic Party (DP) liberals, flailing right & left, blaming them for everything from Trump to the end of civilization.

There’s a problem with that: the DP isn’t really a membership organization; it’s an electoral apparatus. It has officials that don’t associate with the rest of us, celebrity hangers-on, political collaborators from the social movements, politicians who claim it as their own, & state & local functionaries, usually referred to as hacks.

The job of that apparatus is to garner the vote & manage opposition from the left. The apparatchiks are all suitable people to target in denunciations. Go for it.

But those who vote for the DP should not be denounced & excoriated for exercising their right to vote for who they pleased. The truth of the matter is that many who vote Democrat are involved in the social movements, including antiwar, women’s rights, civil rights, & all the rest–& they always have been. Many who vote Democrat are progressive, humanitarian, marvelous people & these sweeping denunciations are not deserved.

Some are suggesting we go to anti-Trump protests to hand out leaflets warning about the perils of the Democratic Party. That would go over well: old people with an elitist attitude who haven’t shown much political gumption for about four decades preaching to rebellious youth.

Here’s a better idea: join the marches, stand with the youth, learn from them what it was like in our youth to feel outrage at social hatreds & injustice–get over jaded, feel inspired again.

Assad supporters are putting out a red alert: “Anti-Trump cult being incubated in the US.”

At what point does right-wing libertarian paranoia collapse into mental derangement? Or is that where it begins?

Emancipation Russian-style in Douma, Syria

Little boy in Douma Nov 14 2016 (Bassam Khabieh:Reuters) Nov 15 2016

Emancipation Russian-style: this photo is Douma, a neighborhood of Damascus, after a Syrian airstrike yesterday. We don’t even want to imagine what it’s like for this little boy to live with war & bombing trauma for most of his life. It’s called growing up in Armageddon.

There’s been a lot of drama about the Russian aircraft carrier Kuznetsov which launches bombers & attack helicopters & its flotilla of warships & submarines now positioned off the coast of Syria. Assad supporters have been reporting their impatience & enthusiasm for when Russia will start launching bombers off the carrier & resume operations against the “throat-cutting jihadists” in Aleppo, Douma, & other cities with tens of thousands of civilians.

Today the Russian defense minister announced their air force has launched a major operation off the carrier in the Syrian provinces of Idlib & Homs targeting ammunition depots, training camps, & armaments factories.

The defense minister didn’t mention the resumption of Russian airstrikes over rebel-held east Aleppo where 250,000 civilians live & which were reported by Syrian activists.

Some antiwar activists object (fewer of them protest) when US warplanes claim they’re emancipating civilians by bombing them to smithereens–like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya. But they consider Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians to be the real deal of freedom fighting. How have politics degenerated so badly on fundamental principles?

Principled antiwar activists are opposed to bombing civilians to death & accept no compromise on that. The only principled antiwar demands to rebuild the international antiwar movement around are: the immediate cessation of Syrian & Russian bombing; the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces in Syria, overt & covert, paramilitary, mercenaries, on land, air, & by sea. Out now!

(Photo by Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)

Criticisms of anti-Trump protests by political confusionists & knuckleheads

LA anti-Trump protests Nov 12 2016 (REUTERS:Lucy Nicholson) Nov 15 2016

Since the election last Tuesday, tens of thousands of protesters across the US & in other countries have been protesting against the politics of Trump. One of the most notable & significant components of the protesters are high school students who continue to walk out of school in protest. Their banners demand Black, Latino, Indian, women’s, immigration, LGBT rights & an end to targeting Muslims.

Anyone with an elementary sense of decency is proud & grateful that young people in particular are standing up against the politics of social hatred rather than sit on their asses or cower in terror.

So it must seem deranged to many international observers of US politics that so many people here are posting scurrilous denunciations of the protesters. At first the critics sniffed at the young people because they didn’t protest Obama’s wars. That’s because they couldn’t get their babysitters to take them to the protests or because their grade school teachers were bigger than them & wouldn’t let them out of school.

When that nonsense bottomed out, the crazy-pants element took up the charge against the protesters, denouncing them as ‘Soros-funded anti-democracy mobs & rioters pushing for a coup.” They claim the left & those damned liberals have ‘abandoned the working class who voted Trump into office when we should be supporting his pro-worker & antiwar positions’ & stop substituting identity politics for class. By identity politics, of course, they mean Black, Latino, immigrant, women, Muslims who feel most threatened by Trump’s fascistic threats & are marching to say hell no to that crap.

Then the accusers throw in the kicker: the protests are a regime-change operation by Clinton forces. It should come as no surprise that those making these surreal accusations are Trump supporters who probably don’t so much pretend as actually believe they are progressives. They complain they don’t want to be marginalized as crackpots & we can go along with that, & even acknowledge their sanity if they will face up to their stinking rotten reactionary politics. Either they’re crackpots or they’re right-wing. Or are they part of that alt-right thing?

Do you think it might be relevant that those slinging this nonsense around to discredit protesters also support Assad’s dictatorship; don’t just support but enthusiastically cheer Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians; see US intervention as a regime-change operation in Syria; ignore Rodrigo Duterte’s human rights crimes & support him because he talks trash to the US; think the Arab uprisings & most mass protests are CIA & Mossad operations?

Do you think it possible that right-wing people actually believe they are progressive? Hopefully they’re just nuts.

(Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

A Facebook friend has cleared up the mystery of what alt-left & alt-right represent. Slavoj Žižek, the racist xenophobe who blows his nose on his sleeve, is an example of alt-left. Now you get it? It’s a way of politely describing crackpots & blowhards.

Emancipation US-style in Iraq

Displaced Iraqi woman (Ahmed Jadallah:Reuters) Nov 14 2016

Emancipation US-style in Iraq: this is an unidentified displaced Iraqi women just after learning her 15-year-old son was killed, reportedly by an ISIS mortar in Mosul.

For those who advocate a US-imposed No Fly zone in Syria, there were two imposed in Iraq by the US, UK, & France between the 1991 Gulf War & the 2003 US invasion of Iraq–ostensibly imposed to protect the persecuted Kurdish minority in Iraq. Only those too stupid to vote believe that.

CBS news reported tonight on the prosecution of Somali youth in Minneapolis for joining ISIS in Syria. Their attraction to such violent politics is a concern. But quite frankly, it’s also a concern that young people are attracted to the politics of the US Marines & US Army.

There is no human liberation rooted in militarism. Bombing, special forces, & mercenaries are never going to be freedom fighters. This war against ISIS is a continuation of the Gulf War of 1991. Anyone who looks to the US military for emancipation either needs their head examined or has another political agenda.

US out of Iraq. US out of Afghanistan.
US, Russia, & all foreign military forces out of Syria.

(Photo by Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

Duterte’s war on the poor: 4,812 executions in four months

Duterte drug victim Nov 2016 (Photo by Alecs Ongcal:Rappler ) Nov 14 2016

In the four months since Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30th until November 7th, a total of 4,812 suspected drug users or street peddlers were gunned down on the street in his war on drugs. According to police officials, 3,001 were victims of vigilante killers, usually described as two drive-by shooters on motorcycles, & 1,811 were killed in police operations.

Many of the extrajudicial killings are in Mandaluyong City, a part of the Manila metropolitan area with large redevelopment projects for gentrification. Huge sections of Manila are undergoing gentrification to build upscale condos, shopping malls, resorts. There have been years of pitched battles between slum residents being forcibly removed by bulldozers & riot police. There are countless slum fires with no forensic reports except fire officials scratching their asses in confusion & blaming it on building materials for shanties or cooking fires. They are much more likely arson for purposes of gentrification.

Yesterday, there was a massive slum fire in Mandaluyong City which killed two people, destroyed 800 homes, & left 5,000 people homeless.

It’s all of a piece–torching slums & shooting down suspected drug users. It’s not a war on drugs. It is a war on the poor.

Anyone who claims to be for human rights & does not denounce Duterte but defends him because he talks trash to the US should stop kidding themselves. They may also want to explain the deployment of Filipino troops to the Golan Heights. It doesn’t have to be said that most of those defending Duterte are also supporters of the Assad dictatorship & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. It’s also of a piece.

Our condolences to the victims & families of those murdered. May they Rest In Peace.

(Photo by Alecs Ongcal/Rappler)

CBS reported high school students in several US cities marched out in anti-Trump protests today.

All of them were led by the George Soros marching band. So you see? Conspiracies can be real.

So are alt-left & alt-right useful designations in politics? Do they represent a new kind of politics? Or are they, as I suspect, terms of abuse used by those who don’t know their ass from their elbow about distinctions in politics & think it’s better than calling everybody who doesn’t agree with them a fascist?