According to the Maduro regime, the purpose of martial law & mass deportations is to stop Colombian residents along the border from trafficking goods subsidized by Venezuela–like baby formula, rice, & gasoline–to Colombia where they are sold at jacked-up prices for a profit. Are we expected to believe this is all about profiteering from baby formula!?

Sounding like no one quite so much as Donald Trump, president Maduro said on TV: “Who comes over from Colombia? It’s people practically without education. I’m not offending Colombia, I’m just telling a truth…from Colombia, all of the poverty & misery is coming over with a people who are escaping for economic needs & fleeing war.” If international law was worth a damn thing in enforcement, our man just hung himself & does not distinguish himself from Frontex & European Union barbarism.

According to Maduro, who appealed for international aid, over 120,000 Colombians have poured into Venezuela this year. So in the meanwhile he’s employing martial law!? The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) isn’t usually much help in these situations but their representative in Colombia did say (last March) that the Maduro regime has the right to “take measures against persons in irregular migratory situations” but “due process has to be offered, with the opportunity to appeal.” He added, that if you say ‘I left Colombia running for my life, because they threatened me’, the Venezuelan government has to stop [the deportation] immediately.” Collective deportations are outlawed by international treaties.

Maduro was elected as a socialist candidate. Kind of in the same way as French president François Hollande who forcibly evicts & deports Roma & assaults refugees on the French-Italian border & at Calais. What’s wrong with that picture!? If you can’t distinguish immigration policy of socialist regimes from neoliberal barbarism, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. And rationalizations don’t cut it.

Immigration is a human right. Open the border.

(Photo by Eliecer Mantilla/AP)

So why are these little girls in a UN school? Are the residents of Susiya too poor to build one?

Israel has been trying since 1986 to evict the entire population of Susiya. They demolished the local mosque to excavate a Jewish synagogue dating back to the sixth century & turned the area into an archaeological & tourist site. They built an Israeli settlement & renamed the place Susya as part of their fraudulent claim to the village.

Since 1986, the people of Susiya have been evicted three times under orders of the Israeli Supreme Court. Their solid-frame homes were taken out by bulldozers & they are forced to live on their farmlands in makeshift dwellings like those in this photo. Israel is trying to drive them out of the area so it can link the archaeological & tourist site to the settlement.

You can’t tell that whole story in one caption but you can do better than make this look like a simple back-to-school story in the West Bank.

Build the economic, cultural, & economic boycott of Israel. Demand an end to military aid to Israel. And like & share this page as part of the campaign to support the people of Susiya against dispossession by Israeli settlers:https://www.facebook.com/StandWithSusiya?fref=ts

(Photo by Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)

The classified plan approved by EU member states was released by WikiLeaks in May. Triton was to be deployed against refugee transport networks & infrastructure, including the destruction of docked boats, interdiction & confiscation of en route boats, & operations within Libyan territory.

The UN mandate for Triton requested by the EU was tabled because association with such an open-ended military operation was getting hairy for the UN. Any military operation against a small number of boat owners & traffickers would really be directed against the refugees–to stop their movement, including just getting on the boats, which would likely entail death & injury to many.

The scope of the maritime mandate was also undefined–signifying not uncertainty about what Frontex intended to do in the open seas but that it wasn’t sure what it could get away with without condemnation. After all, you can’t just torpedo dinghies with children, elderly, infirm, & pregnant women on board in the middle of a sea.

After five months of Triton, there is almost no word on what 26 European navies are doing in the Mediterranean with their warships. What we are seeing reported is images like this one–of rescue workers, usually from the same Irish navy vessel, holding infants & small children rescued from mid-sea. We were told yesterday the Italian coast guard claims it coordinated the rescue of 4,400 refugees in a single day.

Has Triton changed its mission from military to search & rescue? Or are we being played here? Are we being fed a bill of goods about what is really going on? Because as we know from the Greek-Macedonia border, Frontex has no intention of allowing sanctuary to tens of thousands of refugees & immigrants.

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Carmelo Imbesi/AP)

Our fullest solidarity with refugees & immigrants all over the world.

(Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

(Photo from EPA/STR)

Before the Saudi-led bombing assault on Yemen, there were many protests in Yemen demanding the release of Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo. For reasons understood only by the criminal minds that run the US, Yemeni detainees are in a special, arbitrary category requiring they be released to a third country. That is the hogwash reason Ba Odah has not been released.

Ba Odah has been force-fed over the eight years of his hunger strike & now on the point of death, he is being force-fed twice daily. Force-feeding has been determined by countless authoritative medical bodies as torture. Quite frankly, it’s a form of waterboarding. The arms, legs, & head of the prisoner are strapped to a chair while tubes are pushed through his/her nose to the stomach. Ba Odah, who is about 5’4″ tall & once weighed 160 pounds now weighs 33 kg (75 lbs) & is considered dying.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed “Ba Odah v. Obama”, a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Tariq Ba Odah demanding his release on humanitarian grounds–which to date the Obama regime is denying.

Ba Odah is a remarkable man with undaunted spirit. He wrote: “A captive does not possess any realistic means to send his messages to the world other than to strike. . . Freedom should be much more precious for the human being than all the desires on earth. And we should never give it up regardless of how expensive the price may be.” (Tariq Ba Odah, April 2013, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba)

There must be an international hue & cry against these monstrous practices. Obama should not be seen as man of the people but as the war criminal & executioner that he is.

Release Tariq Ba Odah! Close down Guantanamo & the American gulag overseas! No more torture in our names.

(Photo is Tariq Ba Odah)

The European Union has every obligation under international law to grant sanctuary to these refugees–& sanctuary with social service benefits, not just the right to sleep under a bridge. Particularly because most the EU member states deployed troops in Afghanistan under NATO.

It’s not certain how many NATO troops remain in Afghanistan since the US claims its withdrawn & is closing down the war. Just like they claimed in Iraq & we see how that’s turned out.

One of the most important historic missions today is to rebuild the international antiwar movement demanding the US get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, & every other country that it’s bombing. Antiwar opposition is not just another “worthy cause” but of preeminent importance when people are being bombed to smithereens & treated like neoliberal chattel. It is a call to arms because it affects every aspect of society in the aggressed & aggressor countries: female oppression, racist, ethnic, & every other form of discrimination, economic inequality.

Rebuild the international antiwar movement. US-NATO out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, & everywhere else it is.

(Photo by Visar Kryeziu/AP)