Category Archives: News

Massive protests in Honduras against government corruption & U.S. intervention

Honduras protests (Jorge Cabrera:Reuters) July 13 2015

Many young activists may not remember that the relationship between Central American countries (Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador) & the US was the focus of antiwar & solidarity work throughout the 1980s. Since the defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution, mostly what we read now is about the tsunami of immigration from Central America to the US or alarmist reports about the the growth of criminal gangs in those countries & the epidemic of femicide in Honduras. Media presentation is that they are thuggish, brutish societies.

In fact, Central American countries have always & continue to play a key role in US politics in the Western Hemisphere. They are not however just backdrops in US politics or “banana republics,” (a demeaning term social activists should not use). They’re complex societies & should be given due respect–especially considering all the violence they’ve sustained from the US military.

Honduras is making news now because of revelations that Hillary Clinton, representing the Obama administration, was directly involved in the 2009 coup against “democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya.” It’s probably stretching the truth in Honduras to claim the elections were democratic & Zelaya is certainly no prize package politically. He’s an oligarch presenting himself as a democrat (not unlike Clinton in the presidential campaign) & was unlikely to bring enduring democratic change to Honduras. The US, nevertheless, has no right to interfere in Honduran politics.

But much more significant, Honduras is making news now because for the past several weeks tens of thousands of protesters have held nightly vigils demanding the ouster of corrupt president Juan Orlando Hernandez involved in the looting of at least US $350 million from the social security system which provides medical care & pensions to approximately 600,000 public & private workers & their families. It’s not mentioned in most media reports that a focus of the protests is a demand to end US intervention in Honduras.

Militarization increased in Honduras after the 2009 coup with the deployment of US troops & the commitment of president Orlando Hernandez to put “a soldier on every corner.” Orlando Hernandez is Obama’s kind of guy. Since the coup, there’s been an avalanche of abuses by soldiers, arbitrary detentions, murder, torture, rape. They never mention all this in those femicide or gang reports.

Under the cover of the drug war & with the full cooperation of the Honduran regime, the US has been expanding its military operations in Honduras with Pentagon expenditures going up every year. The Associated Press called the expansion “the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War.” According to the LA Times, Defense Department contracts tripled to over $67 million between 2002 & 2012. In 2011, the US authorized $1.3 billion just for military electronics in Honduras. Honduras has the only large US air base between the US & Latin America which is vital to US military domination of the region. They spent $25 million in 2012 to make the base permanent & $89 million more to house the 600 US troops stationed there. (If one counts mercenaries the count is likely much higher.) The entire Pentagon operation has entailed $20 billion since 2002 for troops, ships, clandestine bases, electronic equipment, direct aid to Honduran military & police. One should ask if Honduras still has national sovereignty?

In such a political environment, it is extremely courageous for protesters to hit the streets & demand a halt to all this. We stand with them & should be on the alert to mobilize in their defense lest US aggression against them become more overt & violent.

Our fullest solidarity with the democracy movement in Honduras.

Photo is vigil protest in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

(Photo by Jorge Cabrera/Reuters)

The politics of betrayal in Greece

July 3 2015 rally Athens (Milos Bicanski:Getty Images) July 12 2015

Media is reporting that Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras & the new finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos are attending a meeting in Brussels today with eurozone heads of state & finance ministers for “another chance to convince skeptical European creditors that it can be trusted to enact wide-ranging economic reforms which would safeguard its future in the common euro currency.” There are lots of questions raised here but the only one that matters is “why in the hell did SYRIZA go through the charade of a popular referendum on austerity & then ignore the decisive vote against it”?

There are the economics of the crisis in Greece & then there are the politics. When we say economics, we don’t mean statistics on trade balances, privatization, taxation, loan repayment schedules, bank bailouts, or all the other mechanics of how capitalism works. We mean that neoliberal capitalism is in a global economic crisis which it is trying to solve on the backs of working people. And not for the first time in Greece. The austerity program the Troika is attempting to ram down the throats of Greek working people is the kind of austerity program they’ve been implementing for decades in African countries causing the tsunami of immigration to Europe & elsewhere.

Neoliberal colonialism now enters the eurozone through the portal of Greece. The last time colonial politics entered Europe was under German fascism which led to the holocausts of millions of people, including Jews, disabled, LGBT people, Roma, socialists, communists, liberals. That’s how desperate capitalism is; that’s how deep its crisis. We always need remember that capitalism in crisis becomes more dangerous, more ruthless, more violent—more demanding in its austerity. But we also need remember that capitalism in crisis is violent precisely because it is floundering. An international banking system which tries to solve its financial problems on the backs of pensioners & schoolchildren isn’t sitting pretty; it’s in big trouble.

Then there is the political crisis in Greece which is a crisis of leadership for working people. SYRIZA appears to have reached the limits of its program—a program that allows staying in the eurozone & doesn’t raise the question of whether to stay under capitalism or not. Greek working people invested trust in SYRIZA, a trust being betrayed in Brussels. It isn’t the trust of European creditors SYRIZA should be worried about but the trust of Greek workers. And they’re blowing that big time. The loss of trust & respect for SYRIZA presents the biggest problem of all. Because, where & who is the alternative?

Burning people with false promises leads to demoralization. A demoralized working class that doesn’t trust, that doesn’t have a program against austerity is a weak & vulnerable working class. Accepting the Troika’s demands of more privatization, higher taxes, smaller pensions, would exact untold human suffering on Greeks. There’s no question that would be a massive defeat. But it isn’t sufficient to write jeremiads. The question for Greek working people is what to do next. And we need all be thinking about that because what’s happening in Greece is headed for Portugal, Spain, Italy, & it’s headed north to Ireland. No working class in Europe will be left unaffected—especially the vulnerable like elderly, children, immigrants, Roma.

International capitalism is spiraling into crisis & squeezing working people to death to solve it. Like the Greeks last Sunday, we need to put our foot down. We need to think carefully about a program for protecting people from neoliberal assault & we need to choose our political leadership accordingly. Until then, it ain’t over till it’s over.

Photo is Greek supporters of “No” campaign in Athens on July 3rd, two days before referendum where 61% of Greeks voted no to austerity. Prime minister Tsipras addressed the crowd. One week later, he ignored their mandate.

Our fullest solidarity with Greek working people.

(Photo by Milos Bicansk/Getty Images)

Electronic waste dumping a growing worldwide problem

Aissah Salifu, Agbogbloshie market 2010, Accra, Ghana (Pieter Hugo:2015 Prix Pictet) July 10 2015

Don’t you wish this was some surreal still from a sci-fi movie instead of reality? The photo, taken in 2010 by South African Pieter Hugo, was just shortlisted for the 2015 Prix Pictet photojournalism award. The young man standing in the photo is Aissah Salifu who worked at the Agbogbloshie market in Accra, Ghana.

Agbogbloshie became notorious as an illegal electronic waste dump for the US & Europe. Illegal because according to the Basel Convention, an international treaty that went into affect in 1992, hazardous waste cannot be transferred between “developed” & “undeveloped” countries. The obvious racism & recklessness was deplorable. In the past few years, there’s been an attempt to legitimize transfers as recycling projects & to deny countries are even dumping. That campaign is led by Bloomberg writer Adam Minter who wrote the book “Junkyard Planet.” Many have begun to claim e-dumping is all a myth. Well perhaps they could explain to us where in the hell the dead electronics are going?

Minter functions as a sort of junkyard dog for the entire industry of electronic recycling facilities, electronics manufacturers, brokers & agents who arrange to move the illegal shipping containers overseas. There’s a mafia character to the industry. He claims most electronics are bought by China so they can recycle metals in the components. That doesn’t accord with a recent UN report that the US & China contribute most of the world’s tonnage of electronic waste & that less than a sixth ends up recycled. According to that UN study, 42 million tonnes of e-waste were dumped & only about 6.5 tonnes were taken for recycling in 2014.

The United States led e-waste dumping with over 7 million tonnes in 2014, ahead of China with six million, followed by Japan, Germany & India. Canada came in 15th place with a dump of 725,000 tonnes most of which they dumped in the Philippines despite protests & the Basel Convention.

According to Minter & others, the e-waste at Agbogbloshie is from Accra & other cities in Ghana, not the US or Europe. There’s no reason to dispute where it comes from. Either it’s being delivered in shipping containers from the US & Europe to Ghana’s ports or it isn’t. That’s completely verifiable. But it’s coming from somewhere & whether it’s dumped from overseas or not, it remains an environmental & human rights catastrophe.

Workers, including children, earn meager sums breaking apart computers, refrigerators, hair dryers, cell phones all filled with toxic metals that affect their health in catastrophic ways. One dull-witted writer talking about Agbogbloshie said the workers there don’t live long & they don’t have much but they’re always smiling. Such stupidity & white supremacist insularity makes you want to weep. But it’s far better to seek active ways to stop e-dumping & to affect the electronics industry to change how they produce things so they are not an environmental & health disaster.

(Photo by Pieter Hugo/2015 Prix Pictet)

PBS uses right-wing racist xenophobes as authorities on immigration

It’s bad enough PBS uses David “Poop-for-Brains” Brooks for regular commentary but today they had Jessica Vaughan from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) on as counterpoint in a discussion on immigrants. One researcher discussed how innumerable studies going back a century show Mexicans & immigrants in general, legal or undocumented, have lower crime rates than people born in the US. A tense, glum-faced Vaughan responded that everything Donald Trump said was true. Of course, Vaughan is on a mission: to vilify immigrants as uneducated criminal lowlifes. Because CIS is not a research institute at all but a right-wing propaganda apparatus.

CIS does lots of studies–most of which are regularly debunked by reputable researchers. One study they did was on “Third World gold-diggers” that claimed foreign women marry US citizens to get work permits so that means bogus marriages are prevalent among terrorists. Non sequiturs are inevitable when you’re racist & not working with a full deck–& when you’re getting paid big bucks to invent whole studies slandering immigrants.

This is still a democratic society so racists are free to invent & spew bile. That’s their right. But we have to ask PBS why they insist on treating right-wing lowlife ideologues like reputable research institutes & thinkers when they know damn well they are not. Could it be all that corporate funding PBS depends on?

Solidarity with the oppressed is unconditional. Period.

When activists speak of solidarity & unconditional support for the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, & everywhere else, that doesn’t mean we anoint them all as saints or think they don’t have social divisions & problems as great as our own societies. War & occupation aggravate these & by no means ameliorate social conflicts.

Every society has its tough guys, hustlers, petty & grand thieves; every political movement has its extremists, goofballs, & clueless hangers-on. These don’t determine or affect our solidarity one iota. We keep our eyes on those struggling to end oppression, occupation, & war by whatever means they deem necessary (even if we’re not always in full agreement with their methods)–& we keep our eyes on the children.

Solidarity doesn’t mean turning a blind eye & playing stupid; it means recognizing that military intervention is to control, not to manage social conflicts. It means trusting other peoples don’t need outside intervention to address their conflicts, that they’re capable of handling their own problems if they’re not being bombed to smithereens.

For political activists, the debates among occupied & persecuted peoples are of great interest because how they conduct their struggles have the ability to change the world or at least to affect our struggles against our own regimes. Those under fire have lots to teach the rest of us. It isn’t up to us to parse political distinctions in these countries & publicly excoriate those we think lacking so some can weasel their way out of solidarity. Solidarity with the oppressed is unconditional. Period. No caveats, no addenda, no ulterior motives. Only the recognition that solidarity is the iron law of social transformation.

Israeli prisons hold 6,582 Palestinians hostage

Avraham Mengistu (AFP:Getty Images)  July 10 2015

Media is in orbit today, doing a freak-out about two Israelis “being held hostage by Hamas” after crossing illegally into Gaza. Avraham Mangisto, a 29-year-old man who–with completely unconscious racism–they identify as Ethiopian Israeli (though his ethnicity has no relevance to the story) was seen crossing the apartheid barrier fence into Gaza in September 2014.

The second “hostage” is an unidentified Israeli Palestinian, a Bedouin from the Negev desert area. Israeli officials provide no details as to how or when this second man got into Gaza or why he went there. But they claim somebody somewhere in Gaza has him in custody. Other than the accusation, they offer no evidence at all. That’s a charge that wouldn’t hold up in small claims court.

According to an unnamed Palestinian official in Gaza, Mangisto was arrested after entering Gaza illegally. He crossed just a few weeks after Israel’s carpet bombing siege so Hamas would have been on red alert for Israeli military operatives. When Hamas officials realized he wasn’t a soldier & that he had likely mental health issues, they released him. But Israeli officials claim that “according to credible intelligence,” Mangisto is being held against his will by Hamas.

It’s entirely possible Hamas has Mangisto in custody & if the fellow has mental health problems that would make it a human rights problem. If he’s being held, he should surely be released to his family. Because Hamas may have political problems but it has never stooped to the degraded levels of Israel. Of course, only a political fool would take Israel’s word as “credible intelligence.” Nothing that comes out of Israel’s propaganda office is either credible or intelligent but makes a mockery of both.

So why is this alleged “hostage crisis” over two guys in Gaza banner headlines all over the world when according to Btselem, the Israeli human rights group, there are now 5,554 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, 357 of them from Gaza? Another 1,028 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons for crossing into Israel illegally, 16 of them from Gaza. Israel considers all of them criminal offenders. And not only that, but Israel arrests & imprisons between 500 to 700 Palestinian kids every year in the West Bank & East Jerusalem. Hundreds of Palestinians are held years in administrative detention without charges; many are subjected to torture. Why isn’t all that banner headlines!? Don’t Palestinian lives matter? Is Israel exempt from human rights standards in who, why, & for how long they incarcerate Palestinians, & under what conditions prisoners are held?

Build the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel (BDS)!

(Photo is Avraham Mangisto from AFP/Getty Images)

10th year commemoration of the Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement

July 9th should not pass without tipping our hats to the 10 year anniversary of BDS–a call issued by Palestinian groups on July 9th 2005. It was a brilliant strategy that changed the political landscape internationally, educating hundreds of thousands about Israeli apartheid & the character of Palestinian Intifada & recruiting activists to solidarity work. It is a powerful tool that gives people around the world a concrete way to render solidarity in deed, not just in sentiment. Our deepest respect to the Palestinian organizers of BDS.

ISIS to the left of us, ISIS to the right of us, stuck in the middle with fools

According to CBS news, the FBI chief wants us to remain on high alert for ISIS recruiters. They claim ten people were arrested over the weekend for ISIS activity. Oh yeah!? Are they sure it wasn’t ordinary hooligans with firecrackers? Or maybe errant Boy Scouts up to no good?

They want us to call in suspicious activity in our neighborhoods. But likely that would only lead to high-speed chases where elderly drivers on scenic tours were carted off to Guantanamo for espionage. Who wants to risk that?

ISIS to the left of us, ISIS to the right of us, stuck in the middle with the clowns & jokers.

South Carolina takes down ugly-assed Confederate flag

South Carolina’s governor signed a bill removing the Confederate flag from in front of the capital building & says she will make sure the flag is “put in its rightful place.” She said this signifies the time for forgiveness for the massacre of nine worshippers. Forgiveness has nothing to do with justice. Forgiveness is a personal matter; justice is a political one that isn’t even close to being addressed. So let’s all have a moment of forgiveness for hanging that ugly-assed thing up there for over 50 years & then we can move on to justice.

As for its “rightful place”? Where the sun don’t shine.

Rising tide of anti-BDS machinations

Palestinians on West Bank (Hamza Burnat) July 9 2015

The recent allegations from organizers of the 1st Israeli Feis, a traditional Irish dance troupe, against the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) are something that need to be taken very seriously. They cancelled their performances in Israel claiming IPSC activists threatened to kill everyone participating in the event by shooting them in the head.

The growth of BDS & Palestinian solidarity around the world is an alarming development not just to Israel but to neoliberal plans for the entire Middle East. Zionist forces are mobilizing to counter BDS in a many-pronged assault. Big money & big political forces are involved. The Israeli law firm, Shurat HaDin, is planning a legal offensive against BDS activists & organizations to tie up resources & activists; campus anti-BDS groups are being organized & bankrolled with big money; state legislatures are formulating anti-BDS bills; politicians & candidates like Obama & Hillary Clinton are publicly committing to oppose BDS; Bono & other celebrity shills for neoliberalism are staging extravaganza tributes to the likes of Shimon Peres, the former president of Israel during Operation Ethnic Cleansing; & the Irish dance ensemble are fabricating accusations, for which they haven’t a shred of evidence, to discredit BDS campaigns.

If in fact the Irish dancers were threatened as they claim, they ought to prosecute. No one should be subject to death threats for dancing the Irish jig in Israel or for anything else. But for criminal prosecution, evidence is required. And that doesn’t exist because it never happened–unless Mossad operatives impersonated IPSC activists, which is a possibility. But it’s enough to discredit BDS by circulating slanderous accusations–accusations which have the hand of the Israeli Embassy in Ireland written all over them.

This is the time to review or google COINTELPRO, the FBI program used for decades to spy on & cause dissension in political movements in the US. There’s no trick too loathsome, too lowdown for police agents to use to discredit & destroy social justice movements. These police programs exist in every country. The only reason we know about COINTELPRO is because activists went after them in the courts & at a weak moment in judiciary history, the FBI was exposed.

BDS is touching a central nerve in Israeli apartheid & in neoliberal control of the planet. Of course it will set off a furious offensive. When these accusations are made, they must be exposed for the horse manure they are against Palestinian solidarity.

This photo is Palestinians in the occupied West Bank fleeing Israeli tear gas & asking 1st Israeli Feis to do the right thing. There’s no hint of a threat to the dancers nor did IPSC activists issue ultimatums. Asking insistently on a FB wall or in a picket line is not a threat; it’s called democracy.

The only worthy political response to this barrage is to build the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel & continue to defend Palestinian justice.

(Photo by Hamza Burnat)