Bernie Sanders said not all voters who feel “uncomfortable” with Black candidates are racist. What are they then, Bernie? Just compromised with racism in the same way you are with Israeli genocide against Palestinians? Is there an operative distinction that non-sophists just don’t see?
There is an avalanche of articles vilifying & denouncing white women for supporting Brett Kavanaugh & for voting Republican in the recent US elections. The hysteria–so reminiscent of media campaigns against Second Wave feminists–is coming from establishment media, including the NY Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Time, Vogue, Huntington Post, New Yorker, Globe & Mail, Washington Times, & includes an open letter from feminist Eve Ensler chiding white women for supporting Kavanaugh. Taking their cues from these articles without apparently doing their own investigations, many bloggers are also going after white women for voting white supremacy & privilege over gender oppression.
Most of the statistics these articles throw around in the most obfuscating way are based on exit polls. Doesn’t anybody do their homework anymore? Exit polls are highly controversial in methodology, manipulated tendentiously by the polling agencies (which are beholden to one of the two major parties), & notoriously inaccurate regarding the demographics of voters. Given the tendentiousness of polling agencies & the corruption & anarchic nature of US elections, it is impossible to tell the gender or ethnicity of the voters who decided these election results based on exit polls. It takes the Census Bureau months to come up with a more scientific analysis of the demographics.
The so-called gender gap has been an issue in US elections at least since the emergence of the women’s movement in the 1960-1970s. What statistics repeatedly show is that going back a few decades of elections, Black, Latino, Asian, & white women voters outnumber their male counterparts by several million & white women voters are close to three times the number of Black, Latino, & Asian women voters combined. What does one make of those statistics? Who the hell knows without a closer examination of who these women are? Election demographics are not destiny since there are still millions of women (& men) who don’t even bother to register or vote because they reject ‘all of the above’ with contempt.
But we don’t have to wait months for the Census Bureau. We don’t have to be a statistician or a supporter of either party to be impressed that women voters, women campaign volunteers & women candidates turned out for this election in unprecedented numbers. Record numbers of women were elected, including Black, Latino, & Native American women who took seats away from men. According to Brian Schaffner, an academic analyst of election results, these results were a repudiation of Trump’s misogyny & of Republican politics, including the Kavanaugh appointment. So how does that accord with the accusations that white women are the brake on social progress in this country?
This campaign against white women does not reflect the realities of racism & sexism in US politics but is an orchestrated campaign to divide Black, Latino, Asian, & Native American women from white women as archenemies, as nemeses in the struggle against women’s oppression. It’s the pernicious divide & conquer stuff that we are all too familiar with & it is regrettable, nay deplorable, that so many continue to fall for it. Of course racism is a problem among white women in the US. Not a single concession or compromise should be made with that reality. But this vilifying of white women is no part of any compromise & is intended solely to put women at odds with one another rather than unite in a common struggle against the oppression of women.
All this political treachery began in the 1960s with media misrepresentations of Second Wave feminism as white & middle class, ignoring that many of that generation came out of the civil rights movement inspired by the role Black women played; that Black & Latino women were a large, active part of the women’s movement; & that one of the central political demands was for abortion rights & against forced sterilization because eugenics was/is a fundamental issue for Black, Latino, Asian, & Native American women.
Photo is August 26, 1970 women’s march in Washington, DC; it was the first national public mobilization of Second Wave feminism with protests held around the country.
(Photo by Don Carl Steffen/Getty Images)
An important statement by human rights group Fortify Rights on the plan of Burma & Bangladesh to “voluntarily repatriate” Rohingya refugees back to the killing fields of Arakan state:
Kashmiri children at the funeral prayers of a young man killed in a hunt to kill operation by the Indian occupying army:
There’s another Mary Scully who also posts political commentary on Facebook. She’s a stone-cold reactionary & often posts rubbish about Rohingya refugees, including calling for them to be deported to Burma from Malaysia because they are criminals & “would pose a serious problem as they did in Myanmar.” Please don’t confuse her with me. She must be from a mutant branch of the Scully clan. Or maybe it’s me that is. What do you bet she also loves Betty Windsor & calls her queen? I disown & denounce all kinship.
There’s been considerable confusion about the number of urban poor working people killed by police death squads & vigilantes in Duterte’s so-called war on drugs. Ostensibly, it’s a no due process war on drug users & dealers. In reality, it’s a monstrous plan to forcibly clear out the massive urban slums to make way for neoliberal gentrification like upscale shopping malls, condos, resorts, golf courses. The slums were created by rural farm workers, landless peasants, dispossessed farmers who were forcibly, militarily evicted by neoliberal agribusiness policies in the countryside. The different presidential regimes have been trying to burn them & bulldoze them down but now must consider that a too slow process since slum residents have no place to go & simply rebuild after the latest conflagration.
Duterte, who as a psychopath represents the policies of neoliberal capitalism–i.e., capitalism in its barbaric phase–began this war on the urban poor on July 1st, 2016, the day after his inauguration as president. His national police & paramilitary vigilantes killed people at the rate of 1,000 per month according to statistics released by the police. Filipino media reported on the deaths daily, including listing the names of those killed. But then in February of 2017, with over 11,000 reported dead, media became silent & though Duterte continued to threaten a continuation of the death squads, it appeared he had at least temporarily stopped the carnage. It was difficult, if not impossible, to know what was going on. Media & human rights groups began reporting widely disparate statistics–from 4,000 killed to over 23,000. None seemed disturbed by the disparity even when they conflicted with the statistics from the Filipino national police.
This is a very valuable article by the German news service Deutsche Welle which showed some curiosity about the problematic disparities & about whether Duterte was continuing through with his murderous threats against the poor:
https://www.dw.com/en/investigating-dutertes-drug-war-in-philippines-facts-and-fiction/a-43695383?
Just like the international news blackouts on refugees, wars, occupations, genocides, the Duterte regime is deliberately hiding & misrepresenting extra-judicial killings to prevent the development of international solidarity & it is denouncing any reports to the contrary as fake news.
There have been massive protests in Manila & elsewhere by religious, student, political, & human rights groups demanding Duterte stop the killings. We must stand with them by demanding the end of our own government’s complicity in these heinous crimes against Filipino working people.
eye-crossed-out
This Photo May Show Violent or Graphic Content
The first group of Rohingya refugees to be voluntarily repatriated back to Arakan state in Burma are scheduled to depart on Thursday, November 15th. There is a list of 2,000 who were selected for this so-called voluntary sojourn but to date not a single person has volunteered. If the whole damn thing is so voluntary why would Burma & Bangladesh even devise such a list? Voluntary means putting it up for grabs & waiting for volunteers to step forward. They report that most of those on the list have not been informed lest that create panic among refugees. If they think ‘voluntary repatriation’ would cause panic, why in the hell would they even consider such a warped plan? There can be no decisions made about who, when, or where without the direct participation of the Rohingya refugees themselves & they aren’t going back without ironclad protections against the resumption of the final solution by the Burmese genocidaires.
Reportedly, the refugees are so distressed at the possibility of being forced to return to the killing fields of Burma that many are having panic attacks, threatening suicide, going sleepless, & many are setting sea for Malaysia in rickety boats to avoid such an eventuality. Bangladesh is also still planning the deportation of 25,000 refugees to an uninhabitable island in the middle of nowhere where they would live in barracks just like the concentration camps built by China & India in Arakan state.
The Rohingya have made their demands perfectly clear in repeated protests & through their spokespersons: they will not return without safety & protective measures in place. It must be our commitment to stand with them in their struggle for justice.
Photo is a protest at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar on August 25, 2018.
(Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)
We should take a moment to honor the life & work of Benjamin Ramos, a 56-year-old Filipino human rights lawyer gunned down on November 6th as he was leaving his office in Kabankalan City, in the province of Negros Occidental. He was a founding member & secretary general of the Negros chapter of National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), an association of pro bono lawyers formed in September 2007 to defend the human rights of poor, marginalized, & persecuted Filipinos–farmers, workers, fishers, women, urban slum dwellers, students & youth, indigenous peoples, Moro Muslims, political activists. After Duterte’s drug war against urban slum dwellers began in July 2016, NUPL lawyers also defended the families of victims. In a statement about his death, NUPL said Ramos was “the run-to pro-bono lawyer of peasants, environmentalists, activists, political prisoners & mass organizations in Negros.”
It isn’t certain if Ramos defended any victims of Duterte’s war against the poor since most families are reluctant to file legal claims because of retaliation by police death squads & vigilantes & because the majority of victims are slum dwellers in the Manila metropolitan area. Just recently he took on the “Sagay 9” case of nine farmers, including four women & two teens, who were members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers in Negros. On October 20th, during an occupation-type protest on a sugarcane plantation in Sagay City, they were massacred by about forty men using M-16 rifles. Three of the dead workers were then doused with gasoline & burned. A fact-finding delegation of human rights groups pointed to a private paramilitary group associated with the Armed Forces of the Philippines that works with plantation owners as the most likely perpetrators of the massacre.
The National Federation of Sugar Workers reports that 172 farmers, peasants & land rights activists–45 in Negros alone–have been killed during Duterte’s two years & 4 months in office. But the conflict over land reform between plantation owners, small farmers & landless farm workers goes back to the Spanish & American colonial eras. A land reform law (CARP) went into effect in 1988 after a mass uprising but was soon outmaneuvered & preempted by neoliberal agribusiness policies forcing hundreds of thousands of dispossessed farmers & rural workers into urban slums. Militarization of the countryside was required during which hundreds of farmers were killed. During the 2001-2010 presidency of Gloria Arroyo, it was estimated that between January 2001 when she took office & September 2006, over 703 farmers & organizers were assassinated in extra-judicial killings. NUPL was formed in response.
From 2001 to 2016, through Arroyo’s tenure & that of Benigno Aquino III, at least 114 lawyers were also killed, including judges, prosecutors, & practicing lawyers. In the first 2 years & 4 months of Duterte’s tenure, 36 lawyers have been assassinated. In an August 2017 speech, Duterte told national police not to be intimidated by human rights lawyers investigating the deaths of what he called drug addicts & dealers. He said, “If they are obstructing justice, you shoot them.” The so-called war on drugs is really a war on the urban poor because accelerated neoliberal urban policies now require the displacement of slums which take up hundreds of acres of prime real estate in Manila.
Extra-judicial killings in the Philippines have been a problem since at least 1965 under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Duterte, like Trump, appears to operate like a loose cannon but he is on a continuum of repressive politics in the Philippines. At this point in time, in conjunction with the rise of rightwing politicians around the world, a section of the capitalist ruling elite must consider greater repression & violence to be a more effective way to rule. Under Duterte’s tenure–as under Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Putin, Assad, Xi, & others–vigilantism is emboldened & legitimized. In the Philippines, not just lawyers & farm workers, but journalists, environmentalists, human rights activists have been arrested or assassinated. The many courageous Filipinos who stand up to protest such repression & violence are vilified as terrorists & underground communists, just as Ramos was after he took on the Sagay 9 case.
May Benjamin Ramos Rest In Peace after a courageous & honorable life & may he be remembered around the world as one of the best of humanity. May the Filipino people rise up & settle scores with political repression & violence once & for all to create a society worthy of their children.
(Photo of Benjamin Ramos)
This will warm the cockles of your heart. Don’t patronize old people.
https://www.facebook.com/1661148350570597/videos/2621375114754868/?igc
“I have never seen a headline read “violent Christianity strikes Iraq” or “violent Judaism strikes Palestine” or “Violent Buddhism strikes Rohingya” – this headline is beyond absurd and well past disgusting. This is a blatant opportunistic attack on Islam, when Islam has no connection whatsoever to this or any crime. Islam is innocent of the crimes of its adherents, just as Christianity is innocent of the crimes of pedophile priests, the KKK, and every other criminal calling themselves a Christain. We have seen these headlines before, almost on a daily basis according to the OnePath Network expose – and they are designed to sell papers and inflame tensions that many good, decent, compassionate people all over Australia are working tirelessly to cool.”