Conspiracy thinkers are a cornucopia of belly laughs. A video just popped up on my news feed: “Video proof Hillary “RIGGED” the entire election.” I bet she’s sorry she did that now. It didn’t quite work out cause they stole it from her anyway.
Then we get the Trump is a Manchurian candidate stuff. Those libertarians lost their way in life. They were meant for stand up comedy & instead they ended up being whack-jobs.
Everybody’s filled with dread about the inauguration. It could be worse. If we lived in Syria it would be Assad, a dictator who looks like a predatory bird. The only way this will be tolerable, for however long the orange fool lasts, is to commit ourselves to unity in action to defend human rights, immigration rights, women’s rights, Black rights, Social Security & Obamacare & to oppose their damn wars.
We’ll get through it & maybe come out better if we don’t panic & look to human solidarity rather than the bozo in the White House for positive social change.
There are so many affinities between the struggles of Palestinians & Kashmiris against occupation & for self-determination. This is a valuable article by Kashmiri Umar Lateef Misgar (who also writes cogently about Syria) titled “India & Israel – bedfellows indeed.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/umar-lateef-misgar/india-and-israel-bedfellows-indeed
(Photo is from FB wall of Umar Lateef Misgar)
These are Kashmiri women watching the funeral of Adil Reshi on Monday in the town of Bijbehara, 45 km (28 mi) south of Srinagar. The photo is a subtle version of the portrayal of Kashmiri (& Palestinian) resistance as lone, nihilistic youth engaged in acts of aggression.
Freedom struggles are misrepresented by showing lone protesters separated from the massive protests they’re part of. In this instance, though certainly less pernicious, it is misrepresentation to show a small group of mourners apart from the thousands who marched from several villages in the Bijbehara area in snow & subzero temperatures to be part of funeral prayers for three young men slain Sunday night by Indian special forces. Although it must be said that showing mourners at a funeral of militants in Kashmir beats the endless photos of women’s prayer rituals, snow covered trees, & images of Dal lake.
The encounter Sunday night between three alleged militants holed up in a house & Indian special forces & army units who encircled them has been repeated many times during occupation, ending in the execution of the militants. A feature of these encounters is that residents in the area defy the military presence to rally in defense of the militants. In this one, residents poured out of their homes, despite freezing cold & threats from the military, to break the cordon endangering the militants. The military responded with aerial firing & tear gas to disperse the residents, injuring several people including a photojournalist.
Whether the three young men killed were militants or not, whether the three AK-47 rifles the Indian army claims were recovered were planted or not, isn’t really relative. The scope of popular support for Kashmiri youth shown during the encounter & at the funeral on Monday speaks to the depth & breadth of Kashmiri opposition to occupation & commitment to self-determination.
Thousands braved freezing cold to pay tribute to the three young men killed: Adil Ahmed Reshi, Abid Ahmed Sheikh, & Masood Ahmed Shah. And so do we. May they Rest In Peace.
(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP)
(Photo of funeral of three young men by Shah Jehangeer from Kashmiri media.)
A despondent refugee in Belgrade, Serbia where temperatures are down to -20C / -4F. The Serbian government has asked humanitarian aid groups to stop assistance to force refugees into camps where they fear they will be deported. The help they do receive is from volunteers because there are always & everywhere human beings who cannot look at human suffering with equanimity.
The winter is so brutal that 61 people have died across central Europe, mostly elderly, homeless, & refugees. Two Iraqi men & one Somali woman were found dead from hypothermia in Bulgaria & one Afghan man was frozen to death in northern Greece.
The refugee crises all over the world are one of the most important issues of our times & are all tied to war & economic plunder. It is the historic mission of our generation to decisively address this issue in the spirit of human solidarity & we need to mobilize & collaborate internationally to do so. Thinking out the methods of international defense of refugees is essential because our response will determine the future of the human race. That’s not an overstatement.
Immigration is a human right. Asylum to refugees is an imperative. Open the borders.
(Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Morning news talked to people who like Trump. You can really see how racism & privilege make you stupid. Think of the human creativity unleashed when the scourge of inequality is forever shamed & trounced.
It would be great to post this photo of little kids in Allahabad, India just because they are so damn cute & the photo delightful to look at. But the caption said they are dirt poor kids attending a performance against child labor.
Why they were doing the performance for the kids rather than government officials & sweatshop owners wasn’t explained. But they did note that an estimated 13 million Indian kids work despite its illegality.
Worldwide, a staggering 215 million kids work, mostly full-time & in the most dangerous conditions, including in the US & Europe. In the US in 2013, attempts to enact protective laws for small children farmworkers working with livestock, dangerous tools, hazardous chemicals were quashed by the Obama administration.
Child labor is central to neoliberal capitalist economic policies because kids are an easily controlled workforce but primarily because it undercuts adult organized labor.
Child labor is an abomination & a scourge that must be opposed & eliminated. It’s the least we owe our children.
(Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP)
Palestinian Bedouin women sit next to the ruins of their dwellings demolished today by Israeli bulldozers in Umm Al-Hiran, a village in Israel’s southern Negev Desert.
This is the violent end to 13 years of an exhausting legal battle between the state of Israel & the Bedouin residents who had been evicted from the lands they lived on in 1948 when Israel colonized Palestine & their lands given to a kibbutz as farmland.
In 1956, the Israeli military forcibly resettled them in Umm al-Hiran as one of 46 unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev. Because these unrecognized villages are considered illegal by Israel, they were never connected to the electricity or water grids & never given legal title to the land. There are about 170,000 Bedouins living in the Negev, half in these unrecognized villages.
Israel has been trying to evict the residents & relocate them to build a Jewish settlement on the site but residents are unwilling to move & have been litigating & protesting it with help from Israeli human rights groups & activists. As a result, the final eviction has been repeatedly delayed. But this morning at 5 am, hundreds of police armed with tear gas, sponge-tipped bullets, & live ammo entered the village & began threatening & pushing people around.
Photojournalism shows several officers ganging up on one resident & other bloodied residents pinned to the ground by officers. Within hours bulldozers & demolition equipment moved in & began razing the village.
Before the day was over, police had shot & killed one resident which they justified by saying he had connections to ISIS. They claimed Yaqub Musa Abu Qi’an drove his vehicle into a policeman & killed him. Residents said Qi’an hit the officer when he lost control of the car after being shot by police.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee has launched a drive to expand in 2017 based on the impressive gains made in 2016. That is the way everyone can stand with those being displaced not just within the illegal boundary of Israel but in the West Bank & Gaza.
Support & build BDS. Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729.
(Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)
http://www.thejournal.ie/child-labour-in-dhaka-3106300-Dec2016/
I am always honored & awed to learn what many of my Facebook friends are involved in as activists: Dalit rights, Bhopal justice, refugee rights, Kashmiri & Palestinian self-determination, solidarity with the Syrian revolution, & many other issues.
This article was researched & written by Pol O Falluin, an Irish friend, about child labor in Bangladesh. It has invaluable information in it.
Pol also works with Syrian refugees in Ireland.
In researching for my first book titled “Confessions of a Mainstream Media Reader,” I stumbled across information that lays the basis for impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. No, it wasn’t in that unseemly blackmail dossier from Russia but in his investment portfolio: the Manila, Philippines iteration of his monstrosity Trump Tower.
It will all be revealed in time but I am working on the legal brief now.