https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns5MwRfAkcY

Henry Cuellar, a Democratic Party congressman from this area, issued a statement today against Trump’s executive order to finish constructing the border wall. The guy’s a real forward thinker & a schmuck. He thinks Trump should skip the steel reinforced concrete wall & go with drones, aerostats, video surveillance systems, ground sensors, & more border patron agents.

This is the same schnook who proposed legislation a couple years ago for quick deportation of the thousands of unaccompanied kids crossing the border here, claiming they were associated with drug trafficking & prostitution.

It made my blood boil so when he held a press conference here to promote the legislation, along with John Cornyn, the Republican co-sponsor, I attended posing as a reporter. They were actually refusing entry to those who looked Latino, many who had come to protest. They must have figured the gray-haired white lady was a Republican because they let me whiz by without asking for a press pass.

I wanted to stomp on their pea brains & their smug farty faces but contented myself with telling them off for such loathsome imputations against children refugees.

A refugee in freezing temperatures in Belgrade, Serbia stands with other refugees outside an abandoned gutted warehouse where they live protesting to demand the EU open the borders.

They have decided there isn’t a damn thing noble about putting up with the slings & arrows of outrageous & barbaric EU refugee policies. But if their protest is to have any political power at all it must joined by battalions of international solidarity or they will be freezing their asses off till the cows come home.

Open the damn borders. Asylum for refugees is not just international law but is written in our DNA. We have allowed politicians to get away with criminalities like this long enough. We can’t allow capitalism to turn us into monsters by turning a blind eye or accepting this as the norm.

(Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

“Do you hear the people sing” from “Les Miserables” is an anthem of rebellion against persecution & exploitation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpDbvlAI_A0

Rod Stewart is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on June 14th, for the second time defying the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel.

Please like this Facebook page prevailing on him to do the right thing this time & stand with Palestinians against the razing of their ancestral villages to build settlements for Jews from all over kingdom come who have no claims to Palestinian lands.

https://www.facebook.com/Rod.Stewart.Cultural.Boycott.Israel/?pnref=story

Please also sign this petition:

https://www.change.org/p/celtic-fans-ask-rod-stewart-not-to-play-in-israel

It’s the anniversary of the Arab Spring uprisings which all began about this time in 2011. Cynics like to think they’ve written the last words on them, often in sneering or jubilant requiems. But if you want to understand such tectonic social upheavals, you don’t look to cynics. They don’t know squat about such things. You look to the working people who put their lives on the line to end dictatorship & make this world a better place to live.

If you want to understand why hating on Muslims is such a feature of war-mongering & right-wing politics, look at the places where the most enduring & momentous struggles against tyranny & colonialism are: Palestine, Kashmir. the countries of the Arab Spring, including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, & elsewhere too. They certainly aren’t all Muslim populations, but probably are in their majority.

We should take a moment to pay tribute to the millions of revolutionists, so maligned in propaganda, who fight so intransigently against insuperable odds & to the thousands who lost their lives. They show the best humanity is made of & are the vanguard of social transformation.

Those who look at the Arab Spring with scorn have missed some of the most remarkable & titanic events in human history. The Arab revolutions have not ended & those of us who want to create a suitable world for human beings to live & love in are wise to look to them to understand the complexities & problems faced in the struggle for social transformation.

(Photos are participants in the Egyptian Revolution)

Only time I’ve ever been arrested was in Minneapolis protesting against experimenting on live animals. It’s barbaric to do what they do to living creatures who helplessly suffer. I became opposed to it while a student at the University of Minnesota when I saw medical labs experimenting on living dogs & heard them whimpering in their cages.

Putting them through suffering for cosmetic testing? Even if it’s for cancer research, find another way to test your damn drugs than making helpless animals suffer. Say it’s overdramatic, but if you can do this to rabbits & dogs or even mice, you can do it to humans.

Please sign & share this petition.

https://www.change.org/p/tell-neutrogena-to-stop-all-animal-testing?