We need a lot better reports than media provides of the thousands who participated in Women’s Marches in 30 cities across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Ranchi, Kolkata, Bhopal, Bengaluru, & Thrissur.

Marchers demanded equal rights & protection from sexual harassment & assault of women & marginalized communities in public spaces.

The marches were called “I Will Go Out” protests after a right-wing politician said last month that “women should not be out after sunset.” This is the same ass who two years ago said there should be a death penalty for women who have sex outside of marriage.

This is the march in New Delhi. Proud to have marched with them in Brownsville, Texas.

(Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images)

With reluctance we impose on the grief of Sentimina Bananga weeping next to the body of her partner Jimmy Said who was killed in a vigilante drive-by execution as they were begging in a Manila street. We do so only to stand with the victims of Duterte’s war on the poor.

We could write volumes about Duterte’s death squad war against the poor, we could write excoriation upon excoriation of him & of those who admire him as an “anti-imperialist” despite such monstrous criminality against unarmed people who were beloved despite their poverty.

Sentimina Bananga’s sorrow makes words unnecessary, even intrusive.

Our deepest condolences to our sister. May her beloved parner Rest In Peace.

Our fullest solidarity with Philippine human rights activists & organizations standing courageously against these horrors.

(Photo by Ezra Acayan/Reuters)

Many love Luciano Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” as much as I do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs-p1oEvuGg

At the Brownsville, Texas Women’s March:

Not the most flattering photo of me but after all the women-hating ridicule about the “cutie-pie pink revolution” I wanted to show my rendition of pink power.

We’re in the US-Mexico borderlands so the rally focused on immigration & reproductive freedom. It was glorious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpwLIdScdrc

There’s a ferocious backlash & outpouring of misogyny over the Women’s Marches which one pretentious ass called a “cutie-pie pink-cap uprising” & “yet another exercise in faux left futility.” Worse crap than the 50s. There were over three million of us on every continent making history while you’re pissing away your life hating on us. Try stuffing the women-hating where the sun don’t shine. For as much as we care.

At the Brownsville, Texas march there were lots of senior women, many who were part of the women’s movement in the 1960s-70s. As I was. We got a kick out of singing Nancy Sinatra’s 1966 “These boots were made for walking.” It was this defiant attitude that launched feminism & the movement that changed history. Our work remains undone so we’re still walking.

An article by Syrian revolutionist Yassin Al Haj Saleh which is not so much a jeremiad as a call to arms. What kind of world will we have if we abandon international solidarity, if we choose counter-revolution & dictatorship in the name of national sovereignty?

“The world that has left Syria to shatter, has become more Syrian itself, & is walking on the path of self-destruction. More than at any time since World War II at least, the world’s reserves of hope, altruism & confidence appear at their lowest levels, & despair, selfishness, fear of the future & distrust of the neighbor are progressing in the world.”

http://bhashabandhanliteraryreview.com/2017/01/21/the-world-of-syria-syria-of-the-world/

One of the ways Wikileaks, which has degenerated into some kind of conspiracy monger, & Assadist forces like Mint Press are attempting to discredit the Women’s Marches is by circulating an old video of Gloria Steinem talking about her tenure in the CIA after graduating from college.

She’s always been secretive about it, litigious about it, & it isn’t clear what she did or when she resigned. But it’s old news, only dragged out to discredit her by political competitors like Betty Friedan, or to discredit feminism as a whole & not just Steinem.

For those who aren’t just looking for cudgels to beat feminism to a pulp (& the simile of violence is entirely apt), it is problematic that Steinem was in the CIA. But her role in railroading the women’s movement into the Democratic Party is far more problematic.

There are a lot of political issues with Steinem, including her support for the war in Afghanistan & her elitism. But she is a feminist who despite her politics has made a contribution to feminism. She isn’t one of my teachers; I never found her a very insightful thinker. But she has supported things that more conservative feminists would not, including around the issue of civil rights.

The old ruse of dragging out the CIA thing to make feminism look suspect is political horse manure, not to mention politically jejune. Above all, try not to be politically jejune. Being horse manure is bad enough.

Political discussion was better when most people had inspiration & idealism & cynics were a minority nobody wanted to be around. Social media changed that equation & for cynics it’s become the revenge of the nerds.

What’s worse, the haters & war-mongers are two-faced & good at photoshopping their image so they pretend they’re avant-garde when they’re just channeling Stalinist hacks.

Apparently Assadists think I treat people really bad, that I hate dictators only because I’m one myself. Not sure how that works psychologically but I’ll check around to see if it’s possible.

There are the reluctant Assadists who support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians because they won’t take the time to study the issue. So they go with the regime change crap because it sounds right, doesn’t tax their intellects, & plays to their prejudices about Muslims & Jews.

Then there are the secret Assadists who know support for a brutal dictatorship & for Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians might cost them some likes on their posts so they confine their enthusiasms to the walls of Assadists where they give free rein to their political degeneration.