At first, this image was amusing when I saw it on Maung Zarni’s Twitter feed. Judging by the “Prepared only by George Soros & Co.” on the label, it is the creative imputation of fascists of the Assadist kind who who see George Soros behind every struggle against barbarism, who constantly use this kind of jejune meme, whose stock-in-trade is political aspersions, & who campaign in support of the Rohingya genocide. They have no persuasive political defense of the Assad dictatorship with its gulags & execution of thousands of political prisoners, forced disappearances, or the massive daily bombing of civilians. They have no persuasive defense of the Rohingya genocide that anyone who isn’t completely deranged would accept. So they draw on the infantile & produce crap like this. It flies well in their circles based in Islamophobia & anti-Semitism.

On second thought, this isn’t funny at all. Not in a world where dissidence is punished by exile, imprisonment, execution; not when a dissident is opposing himself to the fascist military junta that rules his country. Maung Zarni responded by saying: “I’m dangerous if you are committing a genocide like my country of birth Myanmar that calls itself “Buddhist” & slaughters, loots, land-grabs & rapes Rohingyas. The killers call me “national traitor”, “Enemy of the State”, “fake PhD”, “fraud”, & now “Magical Truth Destroyer”.”

This is nothing to laugh about at all; it is an attempt to make the Rohingya genocide a subject of ridicule & those committed to standing against that genocide into objects of scorn. Always in politics, methods matter. But more important, if your politics are based on supporting genocide & vilifying champions of the oppressed, you can bend over & kiss your ass goodbye as a progressive because you are goose-stepping your way towards the new national socialism.

We are proud to stand with Maung Zarni on the side of the Rohingya people. That is the side of justice.

Mansplaining isn’t men offering an opinion about women’s rights. It’s about men fumbling through the repertoire of reasons to criticize, discredit, vilify, explain away, but mostly divide women from standing together to fight our common & monumental problems. The mansplainers try to make misogyny sound reasonable, concerned with due process, superior morally & intellectually but it always comes out patronizing & it’s always rubbish. Even when they use an ingratiating woman for a ventriloquist dummy.

There’s a backlash against the #MeToo movement. Big men & their female guppies in media whimpering like babies about due process, women going too far, misunderstanding seduction protocols, jumping on the bandwagon, exaggerating the problem, making false accusations, getting carried away over a little flirtation, being sex-negative & hating on men. They’re dragging out conflict between Black & white women, rich & working women, those date raped & those gang raped. Reminds me of nothing so much as the early days of feminism in the 1960s when we were all called ugly spinsters too ugly to get a man or lesbian man-haters. We’re gonna ride this bullshit out just like we have all the other attempts to destroy the fight for women’s rights & we’re gonna kick your ass when you try to vilify us & our movements. There’s a lot at stake for us & it’s called freedom from fear of violence–freedom for all women.

There was a candlelight vigil today in Hyderabad to honor Rohith Vemula, a graduate student who hung himself after being persecuted & thrown out of school by university officials for being a Dalit (formerly known as untouchable) activist.

He was an embodiment of what Gramsci called the “organic intellectual,” a person from the oppressed with a unique ability to educate & inspire others because he did not place himself above his caste nor seek to rise above others but only to rise with the oppressed. His tragic death continues to broaden & strengthen the movement against caste oppression. May he RIP. May his fighting spirit inspire the struggle against oppression & inequality everywhere.

(Photo is Rohith Vemula speaking)

Those stinking rotten politicians want a merit-based immigration system. What they mean is a class-based system so that the rich can become citizens but working people are excluded. I say hang the politicians.

“Chain immigration” is like “anchor baby”–just racist rubbish against immigrants. Dumb-as-a-stump Trump has made it & the barrier wall blackmail to retain DACA. How does not allowing families to reunite correspond to the rightwing’s ‘family values’ crap? There is also the caveat that DACA is a temporizing policy. In exchange for handing the government your name, address, & job site, DACA gives young people temporary work & education rights with no commitment it will lead to citizenship. That way when the government tries to end DACA (as they are threatening to do now), immigration officers know just where to pick you up.

We should defend DACA but we should fight for an immigration policy based on the Statue of Liberty, not on Trump’s racism & stupidities.

Art, music, literature have always & everywhere been an essential part of resistance to political repression, occupation, oppression. There have been quite a few reports about how Kashmiris use rap music, novels, art to express opposition to occupation. This is an excellent article about Kashmiri women artists using art to resist.

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/7/12720/Kashmirs-Young-Women–Artists-Explore-New-Ways-To-Express-Resistance

Reposting this eulogy of Dalit activist Rohith Vemula who committed suicide on January 17th, 2016 as a tribute to his life & to the leadership he gave the struggle against caste oppression:
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It’s been two years today since Rohith Vemula took his own life. The loss of someone to suicide is a grief filled with questions that cannot be answered, confusions over what might have been, guilt and recriminations about who’s at fault and what could have been done to prevent it, if only we’d known. In the end, it was his decision long in the making that he, “a glorious thing made up of star dust,” as he so beautifully described human beings, could not live without the freedom of spirit he needed so burdened was he with the dead weight of inequality.

We may grieve for a very long time but we have to trust he understood something about himself that he would not let others see: “My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.” That spiritual melancholy he expressed so poignantly is the isolation and humiliation of oppression, of being disrespected and looked down upon for who you are. It is human beings, so strong and yet so vulnerable, who bear the weight of social and political inequality which devour the soul & sometimes exhaust the psychic energies to resist them.

He was a man keenly sensitive to nature, human love, pain, life, death, and the distinctions between the sincere and artificial. The sensitivity and insight are what made him a fighter and yet kept him so vulnerable. Oppression weighs heavier on some, on the thinkers, the ones who care about others the deepest. But for himself, he felt empty and believed in others more than he believed in himself. He gave others respect because he knew its value and its power and probably never understood his own. Those are the confusions that come from inequality.

No one holds education in greater esteem than the oppressed, not as a matter of status but of empowerment, and there are remarkable stories of the lengths the oppressed have gone just to learn. Intellectual aspirations are discouraged, often mocked, and always made difficult to achieve by those in power. That’s why in US history, it was newly freed slaves in the south who first introduced free public education available to all.

Rohith was a naturally intellectual person, curious and eager to understand. University officials probably well understood that about him and detested that in him, which is why they took away his stipend and suspended him. It was the place they knew he was most committed and therefore most vulnerable. That makes them culpable in his death. He was an embodiment of what Gramsci awkwardly called the “organic intellectual.” His intellectual commitments derived energy from being oppressed and from identifying with his caste. His unique ability to educate and inspire others was because he did not place himself above them nor seek to rise above others but only to rise with the oppressed to end inequality once and for all.

We shall always regret the choice he made in death though we trust he knew best when he had reached the limits of his endurance. We wish we could tell him we would never judge him selfish, stupid, or a coward as he thought but will always honor the choices he made in life to stand resolutely against inequality and thus be part of ending it.

When asked what could Rohith Vemula possibly mean to an American socialist and activist the answer is, the same as he means to Dalits and other oppressed castes. He was one of ours, he stood with us, fought for us and with us, believed in our capacities to change the world. For that we honor him. May he Rest In Peace, at one now with the star he came from.

The good thing about the little Toronto girl getting caught lying about a man taking a scissor to her hijab is that she learned young that lies have consequences. The president of the US doesn’t know that & he’s 70-something. Most importantly, the international response showed that outrage was on her side.

It turns out that the 11-year-old girl in Toronto who claimed a man bounced on her from behind & took a scissor to her hijab was making the story up. The little brother she was walking with probably ratted her out. The problem with false reports is that it makes people skeptical about other such incidents. But the girl was eleven & certainly had no idea her lie would set off international headlines. Good that it didn’t happen.