“I have an idea for replacing one of those statues…”

(Tweeted by FishingForTruth‏ @FishBlanc)

One hopes the volunteers & first responders rescuing people in Houston will show those many with an attitude problem toward Texans the error of their ways & that we’ll never hear another word about Texas being the wellspring of rednecks. George Bush could have been any monster’s child. I knew types like that in Minnesota & even more in Massachusetts.

The Kashmiri Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) & Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) will be commemorating the International Day of the Disappeared on Wednesday, August 30th with a silent sit-in protest (at Municipal Park, near General Post Office, Residency Road, Lal Chowk, at 12:00 noon). It is estimated that since 1989 between 8,000 & 10,000 mostly men & boys have been forcibly disappeared. That is about one person every day for 28 years.

The organizers suggest a virtual solidarity campaign on social media using the hashtags #expressionsofsolidarity or #disappearances. The solidarity campaign can include photos of those disappeared from around the world as well as Kashmir; photos of protests against disappearances; artwork from solidarity activists like Rollie Mukherjee, political cartoons by Kashmiri activists like V Arun Kumar & Mir Suhail.

Forcible disappearance is an unspeakable crime with a grief among survivors that is complex, unforgiving, & unresolvable. This is a day to highlight the character of this crime, to educate about it, & to demand governments around the world stop using it as a way to repress dissidence & punish activists for social justice.

You can like & share this FB page to prepare for the event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/492413927784187/?

Spent the morning with two women very well-informed on the details of the Trump fiasco. Powerful forces with big grudges against this ass are working to take him down ingloriously. From here on out we should just sit back & enjoy the spectacle. The blowhard faces extermination & of course it will all be done smothered in legalities. There’s no soft coup by the imaginary deep state on the horizon.

Sophie the Schnauzer who’s smart enough to go to college figured out a way to jump the fence around the yard & would take the four new rescues with her. Two are close to 70 pounds (32 kg) & the two bambinos are about 25 pounds (11 kg) each. By the time I figured out where they were jumping, the entire neighborhood was up in arms threatening to call animal control. They were likely afraid of the two galoots. It took me two days to find where they were jumping & build a barrier wall to keep them in.

Wouldn’t you know, Sophie found a way around my new barrier wall & took them all out this morning. I repaired the weak spot & tried to corral the dogs back in the yard with treats & threats but they were on a roll. Meanwhile, I had an appointment to meet someone & couldn’t be late. So off I went with two dogs still running the neighborhood. I figured animal control didn’t work Sundays if the neighbors called them & the dogs would come back to where the food got dished out.

On the way home I saw an animal control truck out & thought my goose was cooked but lo & behold, Sophie & Gustavo the galoot had broken through the front fence barricade to get back in the yard. For their own safety they have to get on a caravan north for adoption but the hurricane threat also made me realize the problem of evacuating with twelve dogs & nine birds in one small car. News reported that in Houston a lot of those being rescued are family pets left behind when people fled the flooding.

Many people among my friends have been through monsoons, hurricanes, floods, tornados, & other natural disasters so I know you will understand the criminality of US immigration policy during hurricanes. Since this area is the border region with Mexico & a major transit point for undocumented immigrants & refugees, there are thousands living & working here without papers. That’s because about 50 miles or so north of the border the US Border Patrol has checkpoint stations on the highways. When you travel north you have to pass through these checkpoints car by car where you’re briefly interrogated by an agent. It is extremely difficult for undocumented immigrants to bypass, especially in blistering heat, & many die in the attempt.

Originally they thought Hurricane Harvey (which has Houston, Texas buried in two feet of water) might be headed for this region which is one of the poorest in the country because of the high population of undocumented immigrants. The US Border Patrol announced that if the hurricane hit the region they would still maintain the checkpoints lest any undocumented immigrants evacuate with everybody else. That is not a Trump-era policy but was fully in force during Obama’s tenure. Consider the barbarism of a policy that would allow human beings to endure a hurricane, often without shelter, just because they did not have papers. Consider the ignominy of a policy that would force thousands fleeing a hurricane to stop in hours of traffic so that agents can confirm they are not undocumented. It isn’t just Trump we have to take down but also these barbaric policies.

It appears Aung San Suu Kyi & the military have given their response to the recommendations of the Kofi Annan commission released just a few days ago: escalation of genocide against the Rohingya people. If Annan has any integrity left he should denounce the regime & its actions & be done with the whitewashing.

According to a Bangladesh newspaper, there are 3,000 Rohingya on the Myanmar banks of the Naf river dividing Myanmar from Bangladesh trying to get across the river since it is the route taken to flee from military onslaughts. A Bangladesh border guard official estimated there are at least 1,000 Rohingya in the Naf attempting to swim to asylum. There is no report of search & rescue operations for those in the water since Bangladeshi border guards are under orders to turn Rohingya refugees away. That has been policy since at least 2012.

Despite that policy, since October 2016, 87,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh for their lives. This is a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions & part of the crisis is the lack of international support to the Rohingya people.

We stand in full solidarity with the Rohingya struggle against genocide & for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo of Rohingya on banks of Naf from Ittefaq newspaper via Shafiur Rahman on Twitter)

The photo is a Rohingya family from Thami, Buthidaung in Arakan state. One daughter was gang raped, a son-in-law was killed, & one child died in a torched home. The family was bound & beaten.

We stand in full solidarity with the Rohingya struggle to stop the genocide & for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo tweeted by Shafiur Rahman)

Many are asking “why is the international community silent on the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar”? If by ‘international community’ we mean phalanxes of human rights activists actively engaged in defense of the Rohingya, the answer is that Rohingya activists are working tirelessly on social media, by organizing rallies & protests where they are in exile, & by holding public tribunals on Myanmar’s human rights crimes to build that movement. But it has a long way to go.

If by ‘international community’ we mean governments around the world, the answer is that the most powerful of them have vested economic interests in Myanmar, human rights issues in their own countries, & don’t give a damn about genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

The economy of Myanmar is controlled by the military, making the capitalist class indistinguishable from the political apparatus. In the past decade, in order to enrich itself even more off the backs of Burmese working people, the military junta initiated a program of neoliberal economics & actively courted foreign investors in oil & gas exploration, manufacturing, mining, hotels & tourism, transport, telecommunications, real estate, livestock & fisheries, agriculture, construction & services. For manufacturing companies (i.e., sweatshop operations), low wages of about $70 a month is the compelling attraction. Other than providing a human rights face to genocide, the primary presidential responsibility of Aun San Suu Kyi seems to be drumming up foreign investment. In fact, the military may have installed her phony civilian regime primarily as a means to attract investment.

The scale of foreign investment is immense: as of about two years ago, 3,032 foreign companies & 32 foreign-invested joint ventures from 36 countries operated in Myanmar. Some of the top investors include China, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, India, Canada, the Philippines, the UK & several other European countries, the US. Do you think the leaders of any of those countries will speak out against genocide in Myanmar when they all have billions of dollars at stake?

Arakan (Rakhine) state is involved in several neoliberal projects because of its resources & key location as a coastal state. These projects include land grabbing from Rohingya farmers. That is a strong motivating factor in the genocide of Rohingya but the primary cause is rooted more in the legacy of English colonialism. As we know from the struggles in Kashmir & Myanmar, the legacy of colonialism is not yet decisively uprooted & defeated.

We stand in full solidarity with the Rohingya struggle to stop the genocide & for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo is protest in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 from Green Left Weekly)