Kashmiri children at the funeral prayers of a young man killed in a hunt to kill operation by the Indian occupying army:

There’s another Mary Scully who also posts political commentary on Facebook. She’s a stone-cold reactionary & often posts rubbish about Rohingya refugees, including calling for them to be deported to Burma from Malaysia because they are criminals & “would pose a serious problem as they did in Myanmar.” Please don’t confuse her with me. She must be from a mutant branch of the Scully clan. Or maybe it’s me that is. What do you bet she also loves Betty Windsor & calls her queen? I disown & denounce all kinship.

There’s been considerable confusion about the number of urban poor working people killed by police death squads & vigilantes in Duterte’s so-called war on drugs. Ostensibly, it’s a no due process war on drug users & dealers. In reality, it’s a monstrous plan to forcibly clear out the massive urban slums to make way for neoliberal gentrification like upscale shopping malls, condos, resorts, golf courses. The slums were created by rural farm workers, landless peasants, dispossessed farmers who were forcibly, militarily evicted by neoliberal agribusiness policies in the countryside. The different presidential regimes have been trying to burn them & bulldoze them down but now must consider that a too slow process since slum residents have no place to go & simply rebuild after the latest conflagration.

Duterte, who as a psychopath represents the policies of neoliberal capitalism–i.e., capitalism in its barbaric phase–began this war on the urban poor on July 1st, 2016, the day after his inauguration as president. His national police & paramilitary vigilantes killed people at the rate of 1,000 per month according to statistics released by the police. Filipino media reported on the deaths daily, including listing the names of those killed. But then in February of 2017, with over 11,000 reported dead, media became silent & though Duterte continued to threaten a continuation of the death squads, it appeared he had at least temporarily stopped the carnage. It was difficult, if not impossible, to know what was going on. Media & human rights groups began reporting widely disparate statistics–from 4,000 killed to over 23,000. None seemed disturbed by the disparity even when they conflicted with the statistics from the Filipino national police.

This is a very valuable article by the German news service Deutsche Welle which showed some curiosity about the problematic disparities & about whether Duterte was continuing through with his murderous threats against the poor:

https://www.dw.com/en/investigating-dutertes-drug-war-in-philippines-facts-and-fiction/a-43695383?

Just like the international news blackouts on refugees, wars, occupations, genocides, the Duterte regime is deliberately hiding & misrepresenting extra-judicial killings to prevent the development of international solidarity & it is denouncing any reports to the contrary as fake news.

There have been massive protests in Manila & elsewhere by religious, student, political, & human rights groups demanding Duterte stop the killings. We must stand with them by demanding the end of our own government’s complicity in these heinous crimes against Filipino working people.

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The first group of Rohingya refugees to be voluntarily repatriated back to Arakan state in Burma are scheduled to depart on Thursday, November 15th. There is a list of 2,000 who were selected for this so-called voluntary sojourn but to date not a single person has volunteered. If the whole damn thing is so voluntary why would Burma & Bangladesh even devise such a list? Voluntary means putting it up for grabs & waiting for volunteers to step forward. They report that most of those on the list have not been informed lest that create panic among refugees. If they think ‘voluntary repatriation’ would cause panic, why in the hell would they even consider such a warped plan? There can be no decisions made about who, when, or where without the direct participation of the Rohingya refugees themselves & they aren’t going back without ironclad protections against the resumption of the final solution by the Burmese genocidaires.

Reportedly, the refugees are so distressed at the possibility of being forced to return to the killing fields of Burma that many are having panic attacks, threatening suicide, going sleepless, & many are setting sea for Malaysia in rickety boats to avoid such an eventuality. Bangladesh is also still planning the deportation of 25,000 refugees to an uninhabitable island in the middle of nowhere where they would live in barracks just like the concentration camps built by China & India in Arakan state.

The Rohingya have made their demands perfectly clear in repeated protests & through their spokespersons: they will not return without safety & protective measures in place. It must be our commitment to stand with them in their struggle for justice.

Photo is a protest at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar on August 25, 2018.

(Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

We should take a moment to honor the life & work of Benjamin Ramos, a 56-year-old Filipino human rights lawyer gunned down on November 6th as he was leaving his office in Kabankalan City, in the province of Negros Occidental. He was a founding member & secretary general of the Negros chapter of National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), an association of pro bono lawyers formed in September 2007 to defend the human rights of poor, marginalized, & persecuted Filipinos–farmers, workers, fishers, women, urban slum dwellers, students & youth, indigenous peoples, Moro Muslims, political activists. After Duterte’s drug war against urban slum dwellers began in July 2016, NUPL lawyers also defended the families of victims. In a statement about his death, NUPL said Ramos was “the run-to pro-bono lawyer of peasants, environmentalists, activists, political prisoners & mass organizations in Negros.”

It isn’t certain if Ramos defended any victims of Duterte’s war against the poor since most families are reluctant to file legal claims because of retaliation by police death squads & vigilantes & because the majority of victims are slum dwellers in the Manila metropolitan area. Just recently he took on the “Sagay 9” case of nine farmers, including four women & two teens, who were members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers in Negros. On October 20th, during an occupation-type protest on a sugarcane plantation in Sagay City, they were massacred by about forty men using M-16 rifles. Three of the dead workers were then doused with gasoline & burned. A fact-finding delegation of human rights groups pointed to a private paramilitary group associated with the Armed Forces of the Philippines that works with plantation owners as the most likely perpetrators of the massacre.

The National Federation of Sugar Workers reports that 172 farmers, peasants & land rights activists–45 in Negros alone–have been killed during Duterte’s two years & 4 months in office. But the conflict over land reform between plantation owners, small farmers & landless farm workers goes back to the Spanish & American colonial eras. A land reform law (CARP) went into effect in 1988 after a mass uprising but was soon outmaneuvered & preempted by neoliberal agribusiness policies forcing hundreds of thousands of dispossessed farmers & rural workers into urban slums. Militarization of the countryside was required during which hundreds of farmers were killed. During the 2001-2010 presidency of Gloria Arroyo, it was estimated that between January 2001 when she took office & September 2006, over 703 farmers & organizers were assassinated in extra-judicial killings. NUPL was formed in response.

From 2001 to 2016, through Arroyo’s tenure & that of Benigno Aquino III, at least 114 lawyers were also killed, including judges, prosecutors, & practicing lawyers. In the first 2 years & 4 months of Duterte’s tenure, 36 lawyers have been assassinated. In an August 2017 speech, Duterte told national police not to be intimidated by human rights lawyers investigating the deaths of what he called drug addicts & dealers. He said, “If they are obstructing justice, you shoot them.” The so-called war on drugs is really a war on the urban poor because accelerated neoliberal urban policies now require the displacement of slums which take up hundreds of acres of prime real estate in Manila.

Extra-judicial killings in the Philippines have been a problem since at least 1965 under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Duterte, like Trump, appears to operate like a loose cannon but he is on a continuum of repressive politics in the Philippines. At this point in time, in conjunction with the rise of rightwing politicians around the world, a section of the capitalist ruling elite must consider greater repression & violence to be a more effective way to rule. Under Duterte’s tenure–as under Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Putin, Assad, Xi, & others–vigilantism is emboldened & legitimized. In the Philippines, not just lawyers & farm workers, but journalists, environmentalists, human rights activists have been arrested or assassinated. The many courageous Filipinos who stand up to protest such repression & violence are vilified as terrorists & underground communists, just as Ramos was after he took on the Sagay 9 case.

May Benjamin Ramos Rest In Peace after a courageous & honorable life & may he be remembered around the world as one of the best of humanity. May the Filipino people rise up & settle scores with political repression & violence once & for all to create a society worthy of their children.

(Photo of Benjamin Ramos)

This will warm the cockles of your heart. Don’t patronize old people.

https://www.facebook.com/1661148350570597/videos/2621375114754868/?igc

“I have never seen a headline read “violent Christianity strikes Iraq” or “violent Judaism strikes Palestine” or “Violent Buddhism strikes Rohingya” – this headline is beyond absurd and well past disgusting. This is a blatant opportunistic attack on Islam, when Islam has no connection whatsoever to this or any crime. Islam is innocent of the crimes of its adherents, just as Christianity is innocent of the crimes of pedophile priests, the KKK, and every other criminal calling themselves a Christain. We have seen these headlines before, almost on a daily basis according to the OnePath Network expose – and they are designed to sell papers and inflame tensions that many good, decent, compassionate people all over Australia are working tirelessly to cool.”

A Palestinian boy rushes to help a man injured by Israeli snipers at the Great Return March. Such is the spirit of Intifada.

It’s appalling how many socialist academics are decrying how white supremacist the US electorate is based on the results of these elections. They don’t exhibit the analytical skills considered de rigueur for a 7th grade book report. Has the electorate changed that dramatically from the landslide election of Obama in 2008 & 2012? Have these smarty-pants gone through the elections state by state to assess if Black, Latino, or Native American voters were disenfranchised? What percentage of eligible voters of any ethnicity even registered or voted? What are the demographics of voters? Was it rich white voters who elected white supremacists or was it working people who have much more daily & personal contact with Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans through school, work, & social life? How many white supremacists were actually elected? Does being a Black or Latino candidate mean you should be voted in regardless of your politics? Is it true that white women make up the majority of white supremacist voters? Or is that just the usual schtick of blaming women for everything that goes wrong in the world?

If you’re a serious political person engaged in political organizing, you require an accurate assessment of where things stand in the fight against racism in this country & through war, occupation, & genocide. But it takes a hell of a lot of nerve for dilettantish, hermetically isolated professors to vilify American working people as majority white supremacists when they don’t pay enough attention to know or understand & when the Palestinian, Kashmiri, Rohingya, & Uyghur genocides are going on & so few of the geniuses have uttered a peep of protest.

Amen.

What a rousing concession speech congressman Beto O’Rourke made to Ted Cruz in the Texas senatorial race. He’s a real man of the people & “so f**king proud” that Texas voters gave that Cruz a run for his money because now O’Rourke has become an A-list player in US politics & can confidently put his hat forward as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. Even though he lost the senate seat, it’s a win-win situation for our giant among the toadies who make up the Democratic Party.

There’s just one peccadillo in O’Rourke’s rhetoric (because let’s face it, political candidates are mostly all hot air) that should give pause: his ‘proud’ commitment to Israel & his opposition to BDS. We could review his voting record which is consistently for military aid to Israel; his associations with the Zionist lobby groups AIPAC & J Street; his ardent proclamations of support to Israel & just as ardent opposition to BDS. But let us just cite him in 2015 after J Street toured him around Israel only months after the seven-week Israeli bombing siege of Gaza in 2014. Speaking to members of an El Paso synagogue about that siege, O’Rourke “spoke of the fear described by Jews he met who lived at ground zero of the rocket & terrorist tunnel attacks” from Gaza. Does he mean the Israelis in the hills of Sderot who sat night after night in easy chairs sucking down beers, cheering & waving the Israeli flag while they watched the bombing & annihilation of Gaza?

The 2014 operation which Israel called Operation Protective Edge is called a ‘war waged on Gaza’s children’ by several human rights groups & the UN. In seven weeks of carpet bombing, 2,220 Palestinians were killed, 547 of them were children; 11,100 Palestinians were wounded, including 3,374 children, 2,088 women, & 410 elderly people; 1,500 children were orphaned & 1,000 were permanently disabled. Five Israeli civilians, including one child were killed. Judging from these statistics, O’Rourke’s support for Israel isn’t such a peccadillo after all but a fatal political flaw, whether from bad judgement, ignorance, or most likely in O’Rourke’s case, from opportunism & bad character. If there is any quality that does not bode well in politics, it is opportunism which is the willingness to sell your soul (if you even have one) for personal aggrandizement. Or in O’Rourke’s case, the willingness to support apartheid, racism, colonialism, genocide to gain a seat in the US Senate.

Why does his support for Israel & opposition to Palestinian justice matter to voters in Texas or in the US? The most imperative & compelling response is that Israel, with US support, is engaged in a genocide against the Palestinian people. So what, some may respond, when he can do so much for Texans as a senator or for Americans if he becomes president? Do men & women of good will really want social security, Medicare, food stamps to be based on support, or at least turning our backs, on a genocide? Are Palestinian lives of so little matter? Are they not human beings too? If O’Rourke is willing to turn his back on genocide, what makes us think he will not put the screws to us if it serves his career better in his climb to the presidency? Opportunism is like that; it has no loyalty, no principles. So if voting for military aid to Israel means cutting food stamps or social security, what will our man of the people do?

Zionism is a pernicious ideology with a corrupting stranglehold on American politics. It impacts women’s rights, immigration & refugee rights, civil liberties, civil rights, reproductive rights, Islamophobia, war, occupation, genocide, film, literature, journalism. That assertion can be demonstrated over & over again in practical politics going back 70 years. Zionism, which is rightwing, racist, colonialist, must be politically challenged as one of the greatest impediments to social justice in US domestic & international politics. Beto O’Rourke is part of the problem in US politics & no part of the solution.

This photo is Palestinian children attending the funeral of the four little boys bombed to death on a Gaza beach in July during the 2014 bombing siege. They’re probably not “so f**king proud” of Texas voters.

(Photo from AFP/Getty Images)