Elderly homeless man in Yemen:

When the history of this epoch is written it can only be titled the barbaric phase of capitalism: millions of homeless children & elderly; millions of children workers; millions of refugees; billions dispossessed & forced to live in slums; endless wars & occupations. It will be known as an era when human life had no value at all.

Perhaps the worst things this era has done is undermine the belief that working people have the capacity to change the world & put us at odds with each other. Overcoming those problems involves conflict because the problems are domination & subordination through class inequality, racism, misogyny, & other social antagonisms.

Differences in politics are unavoidable & stressful. Sometimes they’re decisive so they have to be battled out because reality is complex & the stakes are high. Competing ideas express competing social interests. Not everyone has the stomach for political dispute; some avoid it like the plague. But everyone can learn from them. They also serve who do not throw the punches.

It should be said that intolerance for trolls on social media is not an attempt to short circuit the necessary debates. It’s pest control.
We’re going to be slugging Syria out for awhile. It’s a harsh dispute & the most important for a long time. It’s not a thing where you can wing it; you have to sift the arguments. But it’s also not inscrutable & any attempts to make it so derive from the guilty parties involved attempting to deceive.

Stick with principles & we’ll be safe even if don’t understand all of a complex war: no foreign military intervention of any kind by any country. Stop the bombing.

There’s a fine line between Assad supporters trolling your posts & the Zombie Apocalypse. It might be good to reiterate the rules of engagement for the latter so you can use them for the former.

–Never engage with one if you can avoid it. Deflect every overture, even if they pretend to like one of your posts. If they try to trap you into a conversation, run for it or “block ’em Danno.”

–Never underestimate one; don’t be fooled by their robotic recitations from RT or Global Research. They can burst out of hiding behind a timid persona & suck your brain out in the blink of an eye.

–If necessary, seek medical attention after any encounter. The zombie virus can enter your body through the smallest opening in your skin–very much like the virus they get from reading MSM.

If you end up marrying one, you’re on your own. May you RIP.

Where on Planet Armageddon might this be?

This conflagration is in Valparaiso, Chile, about 60 miles (100 km) from Santiago. It’s a port city with a metropolitan population of one million people. A raging fire broke out there last night which burned down many homes & forced hundreds to evacuate.
Investigators haven’t determined the cause of the fire but say the fire was fueled by trash mounds dumped in ravines that run throughout the city as well as by the flammable wooden structures of the slums.

The Chilean Interior Minister made a public statement blaming it on people who throw their trash into the gullies. He neglected to mention that under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet the entire sanitation system in Chile was privatized, a hallmark of neoliberal urban economics. That means it does not exist for the slums or poorer neighborhoods & has not for nearly 40 years.

This is neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

(Photo by Christian Miranda/AFP/Getty Images)

The barbaric phase of capitalism:

This overcrowded raft, 36 nautical miles (67 km/42 mi) off the coast of Libya, was drifting out of control yesterday with 112 African refugees aboard. Among the passengers were two pregnant women & five children, including a baby.

That Italian naval vessel behind it apparently thinks it’s on a Mediterranean cruise while the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms rescue ship (a private rescue operation) is attempting to reach the raft to rescue the refugees. All of the 112 people were taken on board the Proactiva ship, an old fishing vessel.

There’s a question hovering in the air about the sailors working those European & NATO ships deployed there to turn back refugees. They endanger the lives of the refugees & must sometimes watch them drown. Do they sustain the same mental health issues like PTSD, the addiction problems, the suicide rate, the violence problems that war veterans do?

Open the damn borders. Immigration is a human right. Asylum is an imperative of civilization.

(Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

“”Rothschild banksters” is a dog whistle, cult code, or secret handshake for those who believe that “the main enemy” are the Jews. Remember what August Bebel said about antisemitism. Not just fools. Renegades.”

from Henry Lowi

PS: Bebel said “Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.”

I remember when Tariq Ali was a leading voice on the left. He’s been inertial for a while; that can happen when you get guru status. But something happened on the road to Damascus.

Now he posts videos of Eva Bartlett & allows comments like this to stand on his wall unchallenged: “Assad has been vilified purely because he won’t play along with the Rothschild banksters?”

Life moves on. People change. The lesson is: no gurus, no masters, no groveling. Find teachers, learn to listen carefully, study & don’t be glib, keep your dignity & most of all learn to think for yourself.

Did you ever think you’d see the day when people who think they’re progressives stand in phalanxes of solidarity with Russia pumping their fists in anger at the US over emails whilst cheering on Syrian war planes bombing civilians in the Wadi Barada valley?

It gets worse: they aren’t just cheering on Syria but are acting as its propaganda ministry on social media by claiming those civilians are all Al-Qaeda who poisoned the water supply to Damascus with diesel. Civilians & rebels in Wadi Barada have allowed government engineers to maintain & operate the water pumping station in an area they’ve controlled since 2012. They say government bombers damaged the pumping station. Doesn’t that explanation make a hell of a lot more sense?

But this is the era of post-truth truthiness & zombie politics–& the most unspeakable betrayals of principles & human solidarity where the “anti-imperialists” swear allegiance to war planes, special forces, dictators, & death squads.

Give us a liberal any day–who holds human life in the highest esteem, who can distinguish between healthy skepticism & paranoia, who hasn’t lost their bearings & their marbles groveling over gurus who’ve long since grown jaded & dull–over ten-thousand “anti-imperialists” on the march to the right.

There’s a guy on Twitter says Eva Bartlett wears an “I love Bashar” bracelet. Actually she has that tattooed on her ass. The poor thing’s a real groveler.

It’s very sad to hear John Berger died today at the age of 90. He was introduced to me in the late 60s by a Palestinian artist friend & I can barely remember now when his writings were not a part of my life.
He’s been writing since the 50s & was still publishing work this year. My favorites were his books on Picasso, on cubism, on the role of artists in society, on ‘seeing’ animals, & all his books on looking & seeing.

He was unlike any other: always revelatory, visionary, & profoundly humanist. His critiques never sucked the life out of art as so many do but only enriched understanding. He gave us new ways of seeing art but also insight into the very nature of human perception which I have found invaluable in art & in politics.

He was a marvelous writer who I loved but was never nosy enough to learn much about. I honestly know nothing about him personally except he was English, a socialist, & lived somewhere in Switzerland.

May he Rest In Peace. He left an enduring, extraordinary legacy.

In response to Eva Bartlett & other Assadists who say you cannot have informed opinion on Syria unless you’ve traveled there: I have never been to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Gaza, or any of the countries where the US does or has militarily intervened. That has never stopped me & thousands of others from organizing opposition to all those wars.

The only people who use that argument–like my three brothers who fought in Vietnam–are right-wingers who support US wars. It’s not just nonsense but it’s war-mongering nonsense to claim one has to go to Syria to understand. But if I did go to Syria, it sure as hell wouldn’t be under the aegis of Assad & protected by his army because that would be just too compromising for a committed antiwar activist.

Besides, there are activists & revolutionists in Syria as well as among refugees who oppose not fraternize with dictators & who can be trusted for on the ground reports.