[Warning – Graphic Image, Viewer Discretion Advised] This what a close range pellets fire does to a human body, today this boy was hit by pellet fired by Indian forces. Full cartridge was fired upon him, leaving a major entry wound damaging his vital internal organs and the government still insists that pellet are non-lethal weapons meant to restrain rioting.

A Kashmiri activist on Twitter (who has thus far eluded the censors) posted this photo of a pellet munitions injury sustained by a fellow in Soura. Coincidentally, a Kashmiri Facebook friend referred me to the above post. There isn’t much information on the incident since it is posted to show just how “non-lethal” pellet guns are to the human body.

There is another report about a 16-year-old boy returning from an exam who was also shot at close range by Indian occupying soldiers. The boy’s abdomen was torn up by the pellets & doctors are assessing damage to other internal organs, particularly his kidney.

The use of pellet guns against unarmed civilians, even stone-pelting civilians, is a human rights crime. A movement needs to be built opposing the use of such weapons & the occupation of Kashmir.

We are watching in real time, thanks to social media, how regimes around the world are weaseling their way around the Rohingya genocide to protect their commercial interests in Burma. To do business on a grand scale in Burma, they have to court the military junta which controls the economy. The Rohingya & their supporters should try to understand that it isn’t personal; it’s just business. Or more aptly, that’s just capitalism.

On their way to the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Burma on November 20-21, the Swedish & German foreign ministers along with high-ranking EU official Federica Mogherini stopped in Bangladesh to meet with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. They expressed their ‘grave concern for the atrocities against the Rohingya people’ in Burma & without batting an eyelash at the political insanity also expressed support for the Burma-Bangladesh plan to forcibly repatriate the refugees back to apartheid, concentration camps, & continuing genocide in Arakan state. Then the three diplomats traveled on to Burma for the ASEM summit where they agreed not to discuss the genocide but instead focus on fighting terrorism & violent extremism & trying to censor social media. These criminal politicians are trying to make forcible repatriation the solution while Burma is still engaged in genocide because that’s a way to weasel around taking a political stand against the genocide so they can protect their economic & military investments in Burma. They truly represent the barbaric phase of capitalism.

The photo is a Rohingya woman with her newborn & small daughter arriving in Bangladesh less than two weeks ago after a flight for their lives. She should not be forced to take her children back to a concentration camp so that the Burmese military can finish exterminating the Rohingya people.

(Photo from Reuters)

It seems worthwhile–to show the political character of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina–to repost this about the Tazreen Fashions factory fire on November 24th 2012 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where 117 garment workers were burned to death & 200 others were injured. This fire was just one of 200 sweatshop fires in Bangladesh & happened just six months before the Rana Plaza collapse in April 2013 where 1,134, including child workers, were killed & 2,500 seriously injured. The bodies of many workers were never recovered.

Sheikh Hasina has been Prime Minister since January 2009. So when she shows up at Cox’s Bazar to do heart-warming photo ops with Rohingya children, we know she doesn’t mean a bit of it. It’s just grandstanding. Hers is the government that hasn’t yet trashed its plan to deport thousands of Rohingya refugees to an uninhabitable island buried most of the year in flooding; that obstructs refugees from applying for UNHCR benefits; that denies refugee children education after primary years; that denies refugees the right to legally work; that just signed an agreement with Burma to forcibly repatriate thousands of Rohingya back to hell in Arakan state & warehousing in concentration camps.

It should be noted that US & European retailers are as complicit in sweatshop exploitation of mostly women & children in Bangladesh as they are complicit in genocide in Burma because of their commercial interests.

In an industrial catastrophe reminiscent of the famous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City (where 146 garment workers burned to death), a fire incinerated the 8-floor Tazreen Fashions factory on November 24th 2012 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, burning to death 117 people & injuring 200 others. The bodies of 52 victims were charred beyond recognition & wrapped in cloth were dumped & buried in a mass grave. Bangladesh, with about 4,500 garment factories, is the world’s second biggest garment exporter after China, with clothing making up 80% of its $24 billion annual exports to several countries including the US & Europe. The Tazreen factory which opened in 2009 employed about 1,700 people.

Tazreen made clothing for many US & European retailers (as well as the US Marines). Walmart (& it’s Sam’s Club subsidiary) & Sears immediately tried to distance themselves from the disaster & claimed Tazreen produced their clothing without their authorization. In fact, documents photographed by a Bangladeshi labor organizer after the fire showed that five of the factory’s 14 production lines were devoted to Walmart apparel. More importantly, officials who attended a meeting on factory safety held in Bangladesh in 2011 (after a series of garment factory fires) claimed the Walmart official present played a key role in blocking reforms to have retailers pay more for apparel to help finance electrical & fire safety. According to the minutes of the meeting made available to The New York Times, Walmart’s director of ethical sourcing said, “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.” And in a sweatshop economy he’s absolutely right.

The Bangladesh government claimed sabotage & arson as the cause of the fire but this was only a cover for the manufacturers since fire officials report 700 people had died in garment factory fires since 2006 & Tazreen was later proven to be an electrical fire. Factory conditions remain wretched, with overcrowding, locked fire doors, & no enforcement of safety laws. There have been other factory fires since with more deaths & in April 2013, Rana Plaza, an 8-story garment manufactory collapsed killing 1,100 workers & injuring 2,000 more in an extremely gruesome industrial accident where many were buried in the debris.

When retailers whose clothing was manufactured at Tazreen met in May 2013 to discuss compensation payments, Walmart & Sears did not see fit to show up because they are completely devoid of social conscience. They’re like psycho-corps.The Bangladesh garment manufacturer’s association offered a measly $1,250 compensation to each family of those who died (approximately two years pay). We don’t know if those injured even received an offer. Unfortunately the offer was more for show because today, on the second anniversary of the conflagration, relatives of those who died protested outside the factory demanding unpaid compensation.

At the time of the fire, thousands of Bangladeshi workers hit the streets in protest, closing down over 200 factories, blocking major highways, throwing stones at factories, & smashing vehicles. They demanded justice for those killed & injured & improved safety. They continue to fight but the odds against them are enormous–the entire edifice of sweatshop economics, including retailers, their own & other governments, manufacturers associations, & a compromised labor leadership.

Sweatshops are a fixture of neoliberal economics & the battle against them won’t be won without international solidarity. That mission should not be left to garment workers alone & students in the plundering countries. It should not just change our shopping habits but should transform our whole way of operating in the world since we’re the ones benefiting from the super-exploitation of sweatshops.

Our fullest solidarity with the garment workers of Bangladesh.

(Photo by A.M. Ahad/AP)

“People at prayer in mosques seem to be preferred targets of counter-revolutionary violence. Hands off prayer sites!”

–Henry Lowi

On Monday, Pope Francis will be landing in Burma for a state visit at the invitation of Suu Kyi & the generals. Last May, despite several years of genocide against the Rohingya people, the Vatican established full diplomatic relations with Burma which involves setting up a Burmese embassy at the Vatican & a papal nuncio (equivalent of an ambassador) in Burma. What doesn’t the Vatican get about rendering legitimacy to a fascist military state? Why would it choose to establish diplomatic relations whilst the military is engaged in genocide? Why would the Pope agree to make a state visit to Burma in the very midst of a genocide?

Charles Maung Bo, who Pope Francis appointed Burmese Cardinal in 2015, has asked the Pope not to refer to the Rohingya people by their proper name but to use euphemisms. If the cardinal who openly supports the Rohingya genocide had his way, Pope Francis would speak in spiritual abstractions about love for humanity & zip any protests about the genocide. It would be truly courageous if Pope Francis openly denounced the genocide & stood with the Rohingya but no one should hold their breath. Pope Francis doesn’t have an inspiring history when it comes to standing with the oppressed. On a 2014 visit to Israel at the invitation of Israeli president Shimon Peres, he visited the West Bank & said a few prayers at the apartheid wall but then paid tribute at the grave of Zionist founder Theodor Herzl & almost canoodled with Peres, including later welcoming Peres at the Vatican.

Our hope for the Rohingya is that Pope Francis will show political & spiritual leadership & not become a willing pawn of the Burmese military. Just so he knows, talking in euphemisms don’t cut it when it comes to justice. Suu Kyi has already pioneered that territory & look where it got her.

(Photo from May 2017 from Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

Surely I’m not alone in considering the European Union a criminal enterprise. What about it is salvageable for working people? Because it’s a wrecking ball for refugees & immigrants, for workers & pensioners under EU austerity programs, for Palestinians, & now for the Rohingya.

It may seem to some that I’m posting too much about the Rohingya genocide & ignoring the extremes of violence in Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, Iraq, the Philippines, & elsewhere. To my mind, genocide must take political priority. If the fascist Burmese military in league with the US, EU, ASEAN, & other regimes can turn genocide into a counter-insurgency operation & cheapen the dignity of human life–specifically the lives of the Rohingya people–then freedom struggles around the world will be set back. Their struggle is our struggle, not just in sentiment but in fact.

Yesterday, Aung San Suu Kyi & the foreign minister of Bangladesh signed an agreement to forcibly return hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to Arakan state starting within two months. The international politics involved in the Rohingya genocide are beyond the unimaginable, beyond the unthinkable, entering a sphere of surreal criminality. The Burmese military is still engaged in its siege of torching Rohingya villages & campaign of extermination, murder, torture, crimes against humanity, sexual violence. Meanwhile, the civilian government announced it is building “repatriation camps” for the Rohingya which means more concentration camps like the 36 they built after the 2012 genocidal siege.

There can be no forced repatriation of the Rohingya without the complete withdrawal of the Burmese military & the dismantling of all its bases in Arakan state. There can be no forced repatriation without allowing thousands of human rights monitors & journalists to enter the state. Mostly, there can be no repatriation of Rohingya refugees without their direct involvement in all decisions about if, when, & under what conditions they will return. What the hell makes Suu Kyi & Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina think they have the right to preempt the judgement of the Rohingya people? Who in their right minds would put Suu Kyi in charge of repatriating refugees when her government plans on warehousing them in concentration camps until another siege of extermination?

These little brothers are one of hundreds of photos documenting what the Burmese military did to Rohingya, including small children, just in the past three months. That doesn’t even begin to describe how monstrously many were murdered nor the emotional scars suffered by nearly a million refugees as well as those remaining in Arakan state.

If we don’t stand with the Rohingya people, every struggle against war, occupation, genocide will be set back.

(Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

In October, the NY Times published an article titled “Hands Tied by Old Hope, Diplomats in Myanmar Stay Silent” laying out why foreign diplomats based in Burma refuse to speak out against the genocide of the Rohingya people. According to the article, it’s a diplomatic strategy & nothing so venal as protecting commercial & military investments in Burma. The rationales offered were politically banal–such as Suu Kyi’s obduracy in the face of criticism–but the corker was when the article cited David Scott Mathieson, a researcher on Burma for Human Rights Watch who in December 2016 moved to Yangon to become an apologist for Suu Kyi. Previously, he showed what a rotter he is by trying to discredit Rohingya Blogger & Rohingya Vision, two of the best international sources of news about the Rohingya struggle. Mathieson, who works that fictional dichotomy between the military & Suu Kyi, said junta strategy is to let Suu Kyi take all the criticism & sustain international shaming & disgrace so they can carry on unobstructed against the Rohingya. Propaganda doesn’t get more sorry-assed than that.

Before diplomatic silence against the genocide became any more deafening, 54 Asian & European foreign ministers laid their cards on the table about where they stand when they met at the 13th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on November 20th to 21st in Nay Pyi Taw, the political capital of Burma. That the Burmese military is still engaged in its murderous campaign against the Rohingya people, driving almost a million into exile, did not deter high-ranking officials of the European Union, senior officials from every one of the 28 members of the EU, all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australia, China, Cyprus, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Pakistan.

The officials agreed not to discuss the genocide but to focus on how to ‘combat terrorism & violent extremism’ & the misuse of social media to spread them. Diplomats only know how to talk through their rear ends so their lies require interpretation. What the ASEM diplomats mean is that what the junta does to the Rohingya people is of no consequence at all compared to the billions their countries have invested in Burma’s neoliberal gold rush & what those who sell arms to Burma also have invested in the genocide. To protect those investments, the diplomatic mission is sucking up to Suu Kyi & the generals by meeting in Burma while the military is in the heat of genocide.

Ending the ‘final solution’ against the Rohingya people requires massive, active international solidarity–meaning political pressure on our own governments to provide humanitarian aid to refugees & asylum with full refugee rights.

Photo is partial group shot of the ASEM officials who should all be bounced from office & prosecuted for collusion in genocide. To Suu Kyi’s left is Federica Mogherini, an Italian politician & high-ranking official in the EU.

Media has portrayed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as a hapless fellow at the mercy of Trump because he looks like a bobble-headed parody of the Pillsbury Doughboy. But he is genuinely pleased here to meet Aung San Suu Kyi because in fact they are kindred spirits. Before Trump appointed him Secretary of State, Tillerson was a top officer in the Exxon Mobil corporation for four decades. According to Alaska state officials, Tillerson has been involved in oil exploration in the state since 1985. He was not directly implicated in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill of 257,000 barrels of crude oil off the coast of Alaska, considered one of the worst oil spills in the US. But he was the chief executive officer of the company during the legal wrangling where the US Supreme Court reduced punitive damages because the accident (caused by Exxon’s lack of maintenance on safety procedures) was “worse than negligent but less than malicious.” So much for corporate or judicial responsibility.

Tillerson was also not in charge of Exxon Mobil operations in the Aceh province of Indonesia when the company hired the Indonesian military to provide security for their gas operations. A civil suit filed in a US court in 2001 alleged that Indonesian military security services involved “genocide, murder, torture, crimes against humanity, sexual violence, & kidnapping.” The plaintiffs claimed Exxon Mobil was aware of the character of the security services & refused to take action to stop them. That’s called collusion. The US State Department under George Bush asked a federal judge to dismiss the suit. Under Tillerson’s tenure as chief executive officer, Exxon Mobil continued to press for dismissal of the case.

Tillerson’s involvement in human rights crimes have carried into his tenure as Secretary of State because he is hopelessly amoral. The 2008 US Child Soldiers Prevention Act requires the State Department to publish an annual list of countries enlisting children under the age of 18 as soldiers. Being on the list makes a country ineligible for US military training, financing, & weapons. In June of this year, despite State Department documentation to the contrary, Tillerson removed Burma, Iraq, & Afghanistan from the list. The three countries had been included on the original list compiled by senior State Department officials responsible for compliance oversight in those countries. They were removed by Tillerson–probably in consultation with the Pentagon. When a group of State Department officials formally accused Tillerson of violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, Tillerson acknowledged that the three countries did use child soldiers. But he said it was diplomatically necessary to distinguish between governments “making little or no effort” to end conscription of children & those “making sincere, if as yet incomplete efforts.” What Tillerson means is that the conscription of children as soldiers is of no concern to him or to the Pentagon because the governments of those three countries have a military value to the US.

It’s not certain if Tillerson’s violation of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act can be litigated since the act includes a presidential exemption. When it comes to amorality & human rights crimes, Tillerson beats in sync with the halfwit in the White House.

Photo is the bobble-head meeting last week with Suu Kyi.

(Photo from AFP)