Cardinal Donald Wuerl, head of the Washington, DC Catholic archdiocese, has resigned after being excoriated for his kid-glove treatment of priest sexual predators. What’s important about his resignation is that it came after Catholic laity, including teachers in Catholic schools, organized public protests & boycotts of his masses. Mobilization of the laity against the Vatican’s handling of priest child rapists is being reported in several countries, most notably Chile, Brazil, & Ireland. This is a new political phenomenon since in the past it was mostly the thousands of victims who organized protests & legal actions against the Catholic hierarchy for protecting predators from prosecution by secular authorities.
Fullest solidarity with the Catholic laity who are standing with children against ungodly monsters in Roman collars.
There are too many who take liberty to say things about Islam, particularly Muslim women, that they wouldn’t dare say about any other religion. I am a harsh critic of Pope Francis for his political interventions, especially around the Palestinian & Rohingya people, on women’s reproductive rights, & the child assault issue among priests. It is observable that most of my friends do not respond to those posts & it’s likely because many think criticism of the pope is disrespectful to Catholicism. But no such reticence or sensitivities over outright expressions of Islamophobia or misogyny toward Muslim women. Such criticisms don’t mean zip since most non-Muslims don’t know the theology of their own religions or irreligion, let alone the theology of Islam. Let it be said clearly that what they are parroting is the war-mongering of this generation & nothing more profound than that.
Last weekend, Israel held its first international Meteor rock festival, an extravaganza meant to rival the annual Coachella Music Festival in southern California. But mostly meant to counter the growing influence & impact of the cultural boycott of Israel for apartheid & genocide of Palestinians. Nineteen artists from around the world backed out of performing at Meteor to honor BDS. Another victory for BDS.
Russian meddling in US elections is penny-ante stuff compared to what the Kremlin is doing in Syria. Syria & Russia are planning chemical weapons attacks in Idlib, the final battle of the counterrevolution against the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. But to cover their ass propagandistically, the Russian military claims it has “irrefutable” evidence that ‘terrorist groups’ & the White Helmets are colluding with several Middle East & US news channels to produce footage of a “a false flag chemical weapon attack” on civilians in Idlib. They’ve got Bartlett & Beeley as well as other Assadist guppies peddling this rubbish on their social media walls. That way, when Syria & Russia add chemical weapons to their arsenal of barrel bombs, cluster bombs, & other savageries against unarmed civilians, Assad supporters, including in the corrupted antiwar movement, can claim it is just fake news.
Our fullest solidarity with the people of Idlib & our profound regrets at the inability, because of corrupted politics, to build an international antiwar movement to defend the Syrian Arab Spring uprising.
Photo is a civilian in Idlib preparing for a Syrian gas attack with an improvised gas mask.
Just so there’s no misunderstanding: I don’t make any pretensions to tolerance. I’m going to be 74-years-old next month which is well over 50 years of putting up with too much political aggravation. I’m preserving my life energy by blocking & deleting those who leave rightwing droppings on my wall. Wish I could have done that fifty years ago. Find me one person who’s changed their mind because of vituperative exchanges on FB with Zionists, Hindutva nationalists, white supremacists. They just raise my adrenalin which I prefer to save for the things in life that really matter. Call it the echo chamber effect. I don’t care.
Assad official Fares Shehabi (who once called for the death of a 7-year-old girl) with Assad propagandists Eva Bartlett (who looks increasingly like The Joker) & Vanessa Beeley at the Damascus International Fair: while journalists around the world in war, occupation, & genocide zones are disappeared, incarcerated, tortured, & murdered, Bartlett & Beeley are embedded with the Syrian army & feted by their handlers from the Assad regime, including Shehabi & Assad advisor Bouthaina Shaaban. That is how we tell the difference between propagandists & journalists. They can make no pretensions to independence or journalistic integrity when they report what they are told to say by the Assad regime as news. Those who fall for such a transparent schtick only do so because of their own rightwing politics. Bartlett & Beeley are the Leni Riefenstahl & Ann Coulter of the Syrian counterrevolution.
This photo from September 9th 2017 of a young Rohingya girl protecting her baby sister as they approach the Bangladeshi border is surely one of the most powerful, wrenching, & damning images from the Rohingya genocide. There is growing clamor, even at the UN, for Aung San Suu Kyi & the generals to face an international war crimes tribunal. Such atrocities & the possible tribunal have not stopped foreign investment in Burma. As international capitalism sees it, what has genocide got to do with business? When it comes to neoliberlism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, the answer is genocide has everything to do with business.
Fascists Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley were oohing & aahing it up at the Damascus International Fair where they met with Assad official Fares Shehabi, one of their handlers in the Assad regime. The last time he met with them was for dinner in west Aleppo during the fall of Aleppo where they triumphally sucked down champagne as bombs fell on thousands of civilians in east Aleppo. They’re probably in Damascus for festivities tomorrow honoring the birthday of dictator Assad. They’re among his most fawning & shameless propagandists, yoked as they are by fascism, anti-Semitism, & Islamophobic paranoia. They rushed to Syria as the siege of Idlib began, hoping to be embedded up the ass of the Syrian army as it moves into Idlib just to tell their guppy squads that all those stories about Assad gassing the civilians of Idlib are just MSM lies, lies, lies.
What will happen to these two lowlifes when the counterrevolution in Syria is complete? Will they adopt Kim Jong-un of North Korea or Ortega of Nicaragua or Duterte of the Philippines to champion since they support them all? Or possibly Aung San Suu Kyi since they both support the Burmese genocidaires against the Rohingya people? Maybe they’ll move to Syria hoping for a regular job in the propaganda office of the Assad regime. Being embedded in an army tank loses its appeal after a while & these two girls aren’t getting any younger. Or maybe Bartlett will go back to playing the violin & Beeley will go back to sales or riding horses like they both did before their hatred of Muslims & Jews & their fascist politics made them ideal for serving as propagandists for the Assad dictatorship. In the long run, history will record them both with the same ignominy it does Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s propagandist, & Ann Coulter, the deranged rightwing pundit of US politics.
