It’s swell Obama & the pope found something to chuckle about for the cameras but this is not just a photo op to prop up Obama’s waning popularity. Media sources can’t figure out what the hell they talked about in their 50 minute meeting or what Obama discussed in a separate hour-long meeting with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, because the Vatican & Obama issued distinctly differing reports on the content. The media’s usual facility with passing off baloney as hard news served them well here & most repeated Obama’s claim that the two discussed a common commitment to world peace, eliminating poverty, & immigration reform.

The Vatican issued a statement veiled in poetics saying they raised concerns about “the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life & conscientious objection” in the US. This is an intentionally vague reference to the Catholic Church’s active opposition to the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare which requires employers to cover the cost of contraception in insurance plans. It’s good the Catholic hierarchy has it’s priorities straight since Obamacare also denies medical coverage to millions of undocumented immigrants & that was not in contention. Doesn’t that exclusion fall under the ‘exercise of the rights to life’?

Obama denies that Obamacare came up in discussions with the pope but admits it was covered in his talk with Cardinal Parolin. They wanted talks with the pope to be a photogenic moment so left it to the cardinal to put the screws on Obama.

The Francis-Obama meeting took place just two days after the US Supreme Court heard two cases challenging the “contraception mandate” in Obamacare & whether corporations have a right to opt out of it if it offends their religious convictions. Two cases by Hobby Lobby, Inc. & Conestoga Wood Specialties claim contraception violates their First Amendment rights & the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed amicus curiae briefs in support of both corporate challenges.

Abortion is not at issue in either suit because, along with many state & insurance company restrictions, federal law (the Hyde Amendment) bans federal funds from being used for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, or if the life of the woman is in danger. While not agreeing, one can understand opposition to abortion & why it violates some religious commitments. But contraception!? The Catholic hierarchy claims contraception drugs & devices may cause abortions. So could denying medical care to undocumented immigrants but that does not concern the Vatican. Denying medical care to immigrants will also cause deaths. So where’s the Catholic hierarchy on that issue?

Reproductive rights for women are under serious attack in the US. It will take far more than legislative filibusters or electing women politicians to fend these massive assaults off. Proof of that is that the voices of women politicians are quiet as a mouse, if not altogether mute, in opposing these attacks or organizing women against them.

(Photo from Reuters)

In July 2013, Texas governor Rick Perry, signed into law one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the US. As of 2011, Texas women already must undergo a mandatory ultrasound (where the physician is required to play the sound of the heartbeat & describe the development of the fetus) & a 24-hour waiting period before getting an abortion. Under the mandates of the new law, abortions are banned after 20 weeks of gestation; the use of medicines like RU-486 to induce abortion are restricted; physicians performing abortions must have hospital admitting privileges within 30-miles of the abortion facility; & as of September 2014, all abortion procedures must be performed in ambulatory surgical centers.

As a result of all these restrictions most clinics providing abortion services have been forced to close down. By September 2014, only six abortion clinics will remain in the immense state of Texas.  And of course it goes without saying that poor working women will be the primary victims of this restrictive legislation.

Planned Parenthood & several other defendants sued to overturn two of the new provisions. Their legal strategy was to challenge only the admitting privileges requirement & that concerning the use of drugs like RU-486. The state of Texas was allowed to implement all of the law while it was wending its way through the legal challenge.

Yesterday (Mar 27th), a 3-judge appellate court ruled the Texas law was constitutional. The decision was something of a foregone conclusion. Judge Edith Jones, the conservative judge issuing the verdict for the court, has renowned herself for racism, opposition to abortion rights, enthusiastic advocacy of the death penalty. She once claimed Blacks & Latinos are “predisposed to crime” & “prone to commit acts of violence.” She has long been actively & outspokenly opposed to Roe v. Wade & has attempted to juridically challenge & overturn it. She also upheld the Texas sonogram law when it was challenged in 2012. Jones used all sorts of legalese blah blah blah to explain the court decision, but in legal proceedings seeking injunction against the new law, she’s the bozo who argued that if you drive fast a 300-mile trip to get an abortion is no big deal. They don’t come more stupid or more vicious.

Planned Parenthood has indicated they plan no massive protests against the appellate court decision. This is an election period where Wendy Davis (the state politician who filibustered the Texas legislature to obstruct passage of the anti-abortion law) is running for governor. Elections always impact mass protest in powerful & negative ways while people look to a savior to bring them their rights. There could not be a more bankrupt political perspective because it has nothing to show for it in over 100 years of experience.

What is needed is mass mobilizations of women from all over Texas converging on the state capitol in Austin to demand reproductive rights. A filibuster is a parliamentary gimmick but what is needed is an uprising. The forces opposed to abortion have been relentless since Roe v. Wade was passed in January 1973. They have taken a primarily legislative approach because they cannot win popular support for their views; the majority in the US support a woman’s right to choose if & when she will bear children.

In response, & regrettably, the abortion rights movement has taken an electoral approach to abortion rights & in those 41 years has only mobilized massively in Washington, DC on two occasions. Those two protests drew well over half a million people each. That is exactly what is needed in Texas & across the US since these state legislative initiatives have long existed & are now emboldened by the victory over abortion rights in Texas.

Mass mobilizations are not counterposed to electoralism & lobbying. Showing up to lobby in Austin or Washington, DC with half a million people trumps a handful of women beseeching politicians like beggars.

Abortion rights are human rights! Stand with the women of Texas! Don’t mess with our rights!

(Photo of women at Texas legislature in Austin protesting new law in 2013 from ThinkProgress.org)

These are intrepid antiwar activists in Manila, Philippines (yesterday), protesting the upcoming visit of Obama & ongoing negotiations between the Philippines & US to establish a framework for long-term presence of US troops in the country & the “unlimited & unqualified use of Philippine bases & facilities by US forces.” Filipinos have a belly-full of that arrangement since WWII, particularly in the Vietnam War when their country played a vital role for the US military.

If you want to get the measure of Obama, you ignore his affable meeting with the pope & the media nonsense about how they share a concern for the poor. These activists, defying his mission on behalf of the Pentagon, take his full measure: that of war-monger in chief.

Hats off to our Filipino brothers & sisters! No military presence in the Philippines!

(Photo by AP)

This image of civilians caught in crossfire is iconic of occupation–from Northern Ireland to Iraq, Afghanistan, & here the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Brazil notoriously has one of the highest numbers of homeless children & slum residents in the world due to ruthless neoliberal plunder of its land & resources. In a process we’ve seen played out on every continent, rural workers are dispossessed & forced to migrate abroad for work or to city slums. But now those slums conflict with IMF programs mandating privatization of public lands & gentrification/urban development schemes so the slum residents must be evicted again.

Favelas in Rio de Janeiro are not just located on desirable urban real estate; many are within a stones throw of stadia where the 2014 World Cup & 2016 Olympic games will be played. So the Brazilian government created an inflammatory view of favelas as havens for criminal drug mafias & under the guise of fighting the drug war marched special forces military units trained in urban warfare into the favelas (starting in 2008) armed with assault weapons & armored vehicles.

You can’t believe the baloney Brazilian politicians & world media use to justify this brutal occupation as a pacifying program meant to bring social harmony. They claim, without an ounce of sarcasm, that soldiers & riot cops will no longer just summarily execute suspected traffickers but will play a role in social development; they will organize youth sports clubs, schools, skill development workshops, teach ballet classes, & other “peaceful forms of socialization”–as if favela residents were feral animals.

The occupying army hasn’t gotten around to the social service programs in the past five years since they’re up to their eyeballs ransacking homes, forcibly evicting people & making them homeless by the thousands, under the guise of routing out the drug traffickers. Residents have made quite clear they want education, health services, & less provocation & violence from the cops. There isn’t a single public service they do not need, including electricity, waste management, health clinics (dealing with every medical need from prenatal care to drug addiction to treatment for tuberculosis), schools, housing, sanitation, roads, sports programs, & most of all, jobs. What they’ve gotten is lectures on trash clean-up.

The rhetoric used to justify this brutal police occupation is not at all coincidentally a clone of what is used against Black youth in the US to justify often martial law conditions in many Black communities & the suspension of civil liberties–in particular “stop & frisk” laws & the summary execution of hundreds of Black youth minding their own business on city streets. When people believed the lies against Black youth & allowed suspension of the Bill of Rights in the Black community without protest, it was only a matter of time before the government trashed the Bill of Rights for immigrants. And now it’s under siege for all of us. That’s why “an injury to one is an injury to all” is not just a romantic, feel-good ditty we chant like a mantra. It’s an iron law of justice for working people.

We don’t know the scope or the statistics, but drug addiction among the poor of Rio de Janeiro is likely quite high–and favelas may well be a center for drug peddling. But the drug mafias orchestrating global trafficking don’t live in favelas; they live in mansions. Going after favela residents is nothing but a fancy switch & bait device to deflect attention from the real criminals.

Military raids in the favelas of Rio have increased in the past several months since the 2014 World Cup games are scheduled to begin in June when hundreds of thousands of well-heeled tourists will be pouring into the city. The Dilma Rousseff regime sent special forces units & more riot cops into the favelas to quell an alleged wave of violence in the “pacified” slums. If there is unrest, it’s more likely opposition to the brutal occupation. As we can see from this photo, the security of favela residents is not a concern.

(Photo by Felipe Dana/AP)

One of the main TV stations here conducts its investigations on immigration like it was an adjunct to the Border Patrol. I have had many poison pen exchanges with their reporters on this score, insisting they just report the damn news & stop trying to nail immigrants. Recently, they’re reporting frequently on the detention of women, mostly from Central America, crossing the border with very young children. Tonight the ever-burgeoning Border Patrol arrested a group of women & small children when they disembarked from rafting across the Rio Grande just a few miles from here.

The station made quite an issue of the charge that Border Patrol agents arrest immigrants, process them, & release them for a later hearing. Many hearings, they report, are scheduled in faraway states so somehow undocumented immigrants have to get past immigration check points on the highways going north to get to their hearings. And then they never show up at the hearings. Of course not. If you can get past immigration, you look for your family & for work; you don’t go to a hearing where you might get deported. And immigration authorities damn well know that. Do you see the insanities of racist immigration policies!?

But you know, that story may make sense to investigative reporters cum immigration patrol but it sure does not make sense to me. According to our intrepid reporters, immigrants are not allowed to work or to move without notifying immigration. And since getting past those check points is the toughest obstacle to finding work in the northern US, why do they schedule deportation hearings in New Jersey or Minnesota when they know most will make a run for it to avoid deportation? If the number of Border Patrol agents is dramatically increasing, why are they employing what the TV station regrettably terms a “catch & release” policy (like they were fish & not humans)? It’s not like they have a humane deportation program. They just dump people on the other side of the border whether they have means to survive or not. And this is when the Obama regime, according to all reliable sources, is deporting more people than at any other time in US history. Can someone explain these mysteries to me?

Immigration is a human right! Open up the damn borders!

(Photo of Mexican children orphaned by the US drug war from hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)