Judging by the twitter-sphere, thousands of people around the world & some media saw images of protesters in Hong Kong making this hands up gesture & concluded it was the influence of protesters in Ferguson who made famous the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” gesture against police violence.

This is when media really struts its investigative powers. The same media sources unwilling to give a coherent explanation of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in 66 years really went to town getting to the bottom of this gesture. Was it mimicry? Solidarity? A coincidence? Or just the traditional gesture of surrender against the threat of police violence? Of course, to corporate media that solidarity thing would be of most concern.

When you follow out the media investigation, you understand why news is so inscrutable, but mostly unreliable. To debunk any notions of influence, one often-quoted reporter says she interviewed two Hong Kong protesters in a crowd of 300,000 & they said, “Nope, there’s no relationship to Ferguson.” Well that settles it then. Another protester claimed the gesture was advised by protest organizers against police brutality & had no connection to Ferguson. Define “connection.”

Media parsing of this gesture was almost comical. “Almost” might be too equivocating. One claimed the influence could be subconscious from watching Ferguson protests on the news. One reporter said there’s no relationship between use of the gesture in the two cities because in Ferguson it was defiance against police violence & in Hong Kong it was functioning as a “simple symbol of defiance”. Knock, knock, is anybody home!?

But for farce in vetting this story nobody outdoes Hot Air, the Islamophobic blog associated with Michelle Malkin, the nasty-assed racist & right-wing libertarian who has distinguished herself with anti-immigration xenophobia. Citing the same two Hong Kong protesters as proof, the appropriately named Hot Air claims “there aren’t even tenuous links between the actions of the Hong Kong protesters & those who demonstrated in Ferguson.” Define “tenuous.” Couldn’t they even cede to that subconscious thing? Then this racist xenophobic site accuses those who claim otherwise of “cultural chauvinism” for assuming Hong Kong protesters are engaging in “mimicry.”

But racism will out & Hot Air blows it in the final riposte when it says: “There may be a larger issue exposed by this lazy display of appropriation on the part of so many. It might have simply been an honest mistake born out of the presumption that the world revolves around American domestic affairs, but it may have been a reflection of the need some have to confirm that the events in Ferguson were, as we were so often told in August, transformative.” One can almost hear the sneering at the Black community in Ferguson. To Malkin & her troupe, the US foreign policy of putting down Muslim terrorists is pivotal & the struggle of the Ferguson Black community against police violence just a local rebellion not worthy of news coverage.

It really doesn’t matter if the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture in Ferguson influenced democracy protesters in Hong Kong because it resonates with millions of protesters around the world facing extreme police violence. It is now a political symbol of rebellion to injustice & will always be associated with Ferguson–& now Hong Kong. It was brilliant in Ferguson; it is brilliant in Hong Kong because it transformed a symbol of surrender into one of defiance against tyranny.

(Photo of Hong Kong protesters using the hands up gesture by Wong Maye-E/AP)

There is a specter haunting Europe & that is the racist persecution & scapegoating of Roma in every country. Racism is not just part of the matrix of militarism but essential to the strategy of “divide & conquer” to take the heat off the ruling elites & dump it on the most impoverished & powerless people in society. It’s a slippery slope that ends up in pogroms & concentration camps.

This woman is a Roma living in Halandri, a suburb of Athens, Greece, where seventy-four Roma families have lived in a slum compound since 1971 (43 years). The Greek government has been attempting for months to evict the residents for illegal occupation of land in defiance of Greek law granting ownership rights to anyone who possesses land for longer than 20 years. The government plan was to demolish the compound (likely for purposes of gentrification) & relocate the Roma community to Mount Patera near Megara, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside the city at an altitude of 750 meters (just less than half a mile) with freezing temperatures & no essentials like running water, electricity, santitation, or schools & health facilities, & the nearest road 15 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) away. Residents don’t want to be evicted from a place they’ve made home for 43 years; their kids go to school in the area, they all work nearby & they will have neither schools nor jobs in the remote mountain outside Athens.

An estimated 140,000 Greek Roma live in about 200 makeshift compounds. Reportedly the Greek government has received 12.5 euros for badly-needed infrastructure projects but only 10,000 euro are accounted for. Some municipal officials were prosecuted for financial corruption involving 1.3 million euros designated for infrastructure projects that never materialized. Forced & illegal relocations of Roma from urban compounds have gone on in Greece since about 2000. They generally involve police brutality & forced removal to remote, undesirable locations. It was referred to by one human rights official as “institutionalized apartheid”–& that’s as good a term as any. Earlier this year, a Roma representative wrote an open letter to Greek officials protesting these relocations, titled “Roma means human, not human garbage.”

Leaders of the Roma community have been litigating & negotiating with officials for months for a deferral to find a more suitable location than Mount Patera. Roma rights organizations have filed formal complaints against Greece under the European Social Charter mandating housing as a human right. They claim racism & discrimination against Roma & systemic violations of the right to adequate housing in Greece. There’s really no shortage of laws (under the UN, the European Union, & Greek legislation) protecting Roma but there are also no provisions for enforcing their rights against officials hell-bent on ignoring them.

Officials in Athens had no intention of postponing the eviction & yesterday gave the community a half-hour to clear out peacefully before they moved in riot cops & bulldozers. The Roma community responded by setting up road blocks on a main traffic artery in Athens, setting dumpsters & tires on fire to block riot cops from attacking them or bulldozers from moving in to demolish. They were no match against a superior military force. Again might trumps rights.

The future of humanity depends on a ferocious rejection of racist discrimination & social hatred. There is no way forward without solidarity with those persecuted for their identity. Without that political solidarity, it’s all downhill from here for all of us.

(Photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)

Now this is what you call commitment! These Hong Kong democracy protesters came in their own battle gear to stand up against a massive display of police force armed to the teeth & going hog wild with the tear gas. But they came in their thousands & numbers is the strength of working people & the force of justice.

We should honor these protesters, now on the front line of the fight for democracy which is a worldwide struggle manifesting on every continent. Political struggle engages ordinary people to collectively accomplish the extraordinary task of social transformation. Struggle for justice is when the creativity & genius of ordinary people becomes most apparent. And these makeshift gas masks are only the half of it.

We salute them & send them our fullest solidarity.

(Photo by Alex Hofford/EPA)

The Cold War myth is that democracy is the political system of capitalism & tyranny the political system of socialism. Stalin’s gulag lent a certain persuasive power to that fabrication but you could look around the world & see it didn’t make a bit of sense. Capitalism is more often associated with dictatorship & repressive juntas than with the kind of so-called democracy we have in the US.

We can never be dismissive of the Bill of Rights but in fact for most of US history (& this is true in other countries) working people have had to fight tooth & nail for the right to speak their minds, publish what they think, & protest for what they believe. US history is a battleground of democracy against state repression. You don’t notice this contradiction with the Bill of Rights unless you actually stand at odds with US policies. But the history of the labor & civil rights movements in particular will stand your hair on end for the violence used against protesters.

These riot cops in gas masks are in capitalist Hong Kong (where the capitalist operations of so-called socialist China are negotiated) facing off against hundreds of thousands of democracy protesters. Do you think that Cold War stuff might be a bill of goods? Do you think Mao’s “Little Red Book” might need a little updating?

Winning the right to protest without police violence is becoming increasingly more difficult in every country & ending that violence is central to the struggle for democratic rights.

Our fullest solidarity with the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

(Photo by Xaume Olleros/AFP/Getty Images)

Since the emergence of feminism in the 1960s, war has always been an issue to the the US movement since there has never been a time without a US war. How feminists relate to war & to the antiwar movement was always a disputed issue. Many who don’t know the internal history of the women’s movement have a simple-minded attitude towards it–as if it were a monolith of white, middle-class, man-hating prudes. Complexity befuddles too many. There were many disputes within feminism & the attitude to US war was chief among them.

In the 1960s-70s generation & the era of the Vietnam War, conscription was an issue in the US. The debate was whether to demand women’s inclusion in the draft or as more radical women proposed, oppose the draft for both men & women. Women have always been in the military primarily as nurses, medics, & clerical workers but in the 1970s they began to get recruited in large numbers & allowed into military academies so they could become generals. It was only last year women were allowed to serve combat duty. They’re now in every branch of the service, including as pilots.

Whether this inclusion is an advance for women’s emancipation is an important issue to discuss. Desegregating the US military for Blacks was a substantial civil rights campaign during WWII but it’s a mixed bag because it means more young people get killed, maimed, or chewed up by US wars. And the same has proven true for women since the sexual assault statistics in the military are astronomical & they come back with the same war injuries & psychological traumas as male veterans.

Women serve in the military all over the world. The story of Mariam al-Mansouri, a combat pilot from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is taking the news by storm & there are many striking features to the story. It was released at the same time as the quote by the Saudi Arabian sheikh who opposed women driving cars because he thought it would damage their ovaries. (The less said about the sheikh, the better!) More significantly, it was released in the context of crescendoing Islamophobia where media is absolutely brazen & shameless in promoting animosity toward Muslims. When FOX news commentators ridiculed her in the most demeaning & misogynist way, it evoked a backlash of defense by feminists, US veterans, & others.

Ironically, Saudi Arabia (where women aren’t allowed to drive), the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, & Bahrain have allied with the US & its NATO henchmen to conduct bombing campaigns against Islamic State paramilitary groups in Syria. The stinking fish in the story is that US war propaganda includes two components: whipping up irrational Islamophobia & using feminism to serve US militarism & colonialism. The wretched hatred of Muslims is being interwoven with right-wing feminism & there is increasing evidence they intend to run us around the block with that deadly combination. In the end several more countries will be reduced to rubble & feminism will be discredited. Colonialism will be advanced & women’s freedom from oppression will be outmaneuvered. It’s a double whammy that cannot be allowed.

There’s no question women can fly fighter jets. They can do almost any damn thing except pee standing up. There’s no need to go all libertarian & see conspiracy here but Ms. al-Mansouri, even in her hijab, serves US war propaganda very well–whether she knows it or not. She may contradict the hate narrative of the downtrodden Muslim woman but she’s the cat’s pajamas for feminism in the service of war.

Antiwar feminists need to start kicking ass & taking the narrative of what feminism stands for back from those who would use it to eventually discredit & destroy it. Feminism is about ending violence & oppression against women & opposing racist wars & colonialism is central to that mission.

(Photo is screen shot of Mariam al-Mansouri from video on Yahoo)

One of the most famous & regrettable quotes of Mao Zedong comes from a speech he gave to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 1938: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” He went on to say: “All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power.” And again: “In this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. You gotta ask yourself where the hell Mao learned his Marxism. But we sure now know where the current Chinese regime learned theirs.

There have been several days now of spectacular, massive protests in Hong Kong over the democratic right of suffrage; that is, residents of Hong Kong want Beijing to drop its schemes to control elections in Hong Kong in order to install the same kind of politics they maintain on the mainland where one party backed by a mighty army determines who’s in charge & there is no electoral democracy.

Those in countries where parliamentary democracy prevails well know that popular democracy does not grow out of elections. More & more, elections are jockeying over figures from competing parties with identical politics or political programs only distinguished from bad to worse. More & more, we see maneuvers using elections to outsmart popular demands for democracy & the end of tyranny (as against the Egyptian uprising). More & more elections are a swindle because in one way or another the nominating process is controlled & election laws so prohibitive that only millionaires can afford to run. In most countries people tolerate this outrage & express their cynicism by boycotting elections & becoming politically passive. In Hong Kong, the democracy movement is taking a stand against these electoral manipulations & represents a fight for genuine electoral democracy.

Hundreds of thousands in Hong Kong are protesting China’s proposed electoral scam & will be doing so at the ceremony tomorrow marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Protesters are occupying government buildings & the central business district of Hong Kong blocking traffic & closing down banks & businesses. That business district is where billions of dollars in Chinese trade & commerce transpires.

This year is also the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre which the active democracy movement in Hong Kong commemorates with annual protests demanding justice for those murdered & incarcerated. Tiananmen was an event where the Chinese regime tried to demonstrate Mao’s assertion that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” The annual protests are held to counter that repugnant assertion with a demand for accountability by the regime for its crimes in Tiananmen.

There have been concerns expressed that China would in fact sic the army on Hong Kong protesters. Such an option can never be excluded but China would have hell to pay if it took that route. The stench & stigma of the Tiananmen massacre still has not politically dissipated. For now, Hong Kong riot cops are using extreme violence against protesters, including indiscriminate use of tear gas. Protesters, familiar with police brutality prepared for that eventuality with training exercises in how to handle tear gas attacks. Many showed up dressed in plastic, makeshift gas masks, & other equipment & are using umbrellas they used for a rain storm to defend themselves against tear gas attacks.

In a very real way, the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong is a struggle for the soul of socialism. If Mao is right that military repression is necessary for socialism, who in their right mind would want it!? If ‘only guns can transform the world’, who but criminal cartels & the National Rifle Association would want any part of it!? As the Hong Kong protesters show, as the Arab uprisings & anti-austerity protests & Occupy movement showed, social transformation is driven by the human demand for freedom & justice & peace. It is not political power that grows out of the barrel of a gun but tyranny.

Our fullest solidarity with our brothers & sisters in Hong Kong. May they shove those umbrellas where the sun don’t shine–up the keister of Chinese tyranny that still has Tiananmen to answer for.

(Photo of protest in Hong Kong on Sept 28th by Apple Daily/AP)

In all the media hoopla over the new Clinton kid, the voices of the millions of children who have suffered or died under policies shilled by the two despicable grandparents should be heard. Pity the Clinton child. Prosecute the grandparents for crimes against humanity.

There is one possible upside to this new Clinton kid. Maybe the two odious grandparents will opt out of making life a living hell for millions of other kids–most notably in Haiti–& spend the rest of their paltry lives doting on the kid. I refuse to congratulate them. Who gives a rat’s ass about their pathetic personal lives!?

While the odious Clintons celebrate the new kid, these Syrian children are fleeing from US carpet bombing. Until the current US bombing of Syria, most military aid was given to paramilitary groups fighting the tyrannical Assad regime.

Hillary Clinton, in her bid to be chosen presidential candidate, is attempting to distinguish her policies from Obama by moving more to the right on Syria as well as other conflicts. Bill Clinton publicly & fully supports her barbaric perspectives. Stand with the children of Syria by marching against US war in Iraq & Syria.

US out of Syria! End the bombing!

(Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

As the US prepares again for carpet bombing in Iraq, we honor the children of Iraq who have suffered so unspeakably for so long. It was Clinton’s Secretary of State, the odious Madeline Albright who said in his stead that ‘the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was “worth it” to achieve US foreign policy goals’.

We don’t agree with these monstrous barbarians & with US foreign policy & pledge to oppose these wars by building the international antiwar movement.

US out of Iraq! US out of Syria! US out of Afghanistan!

(Photo of Iraqi children getting meal handouts; date & photographer unknown)

Once again, while the Clintons celebrate their grandkid, we should honor the children of Afghanistan, many now refugees in Pakistan while US-NATO occupies & assails their country with thousands of drone sorties, destroying homes, schools, mosques, fields, hospitals, & terrorizes the population; denies democratic rights; has disabled & dismembered thousands with bombs & land mines. Both Clintons wholeheartedly support this barbaric war & have played important roles in negotiating continued US presence.

US-NATO out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!

(Photo of Afghani refugees by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)