Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Burma & Bangladesh between November 26th & December 2nd. In Burma, he is scheduled to meet with Suu Kyi & the generals & later address politicians, diplomats, military leaders, & the highest Buddhist authorities in Burma, who all support the Rohingya genocide. Now the question is, what will he be talking about?

Last May, just a few months after the several month genocidal offensive against the Rohingya in 2016-2017, Suu Kyi met with the Pope in the Vatican to discuss establishing full diplomatic relations between the Vatican & Burma. Maybe Pope Francis is naive about politics & hopes to persuade Suu Kyi & the generals that genocide is contrary to religious teachings in all religions. But naiveté is unlikely since the Vatican has the resources to get the Pope up to speed on what is going on in world politics & how it’s folly, if not idiocy, to think you can talk fascist genocidaires out of genocide. Pope Francis should realize that he compromises the Vatican & the Catholic Church by publicly meeting with Suu Kyi & the generals whilst they are conducting a genocide that has caused 582,000 Rohingya to flee for their lives because their villages are being torched & thousands murdered, raped, tortured.

Does Pope Francis fear that if he doesn’t compromise with Suu Kyi & the generals the estimated 450,000 Catholics in Burma will suffer consequences? As a religious leader, he ought more to fear the moral, spiritual, & political corruption he will generate among those Catholics by compromising with fascism & genocide & appearing to legitimize monstrous human rights crimes. He ought to stop mollifying the fascist junta & make vigorous calls for the Catholic Church in Burma to actively oppose the Rohingya genocide. The Pope should not be held to a lower standard of human rights than we hold ordinary Catholics who should be horrified by his compromises.

He could begin by rebuffing all diplomacies with Suu Kyi & the generals & by summoning Cardinal Charles Maung Bo & the other Burmese bishops to the Vatican for censure & threats of excommunication if they don’t stop supporting the genocide. This is a video of the speech the Cardinal gave to that October 10th interfaith rally where he is ardently cheering on Suu Kyi & the generals. It shows him not to an unwilling participant in this rally but an enthusiastic, bloodthirsty adherent of the military junta, Suu Kyi, & the Rohingya genocide.

https://www.facebook.com/ayemicho/videos/10155284899462087/

(Photo is Suu Kyi at Vatican in May 2017 by Tony Gentile/AFP)

A valuable interview with Kashmiri human rights advocate Parvez Imroz:

http://kashmirink.in/news/interview/-kashmir-s-tragedy-is-that-our-collective-memory-isn-t-institutionalised/453.html

Are you noticing how many politicians & governmental bodies are calling for repatriation of Rohingya refugees without also denouncing & calling for an end to the genocide that sent 582,000 fleeing for their lives? That’s because they don’t want to provide humanitarian aid or accept refugees so to make the problem go away they call for repatriation back to certain death in Burma. The human rights imperative is: no decisions about the Rohingya refugees made without the direct & democratic involvement of the Rohingya people. It is what they want that matters, not what the UN, Bangladeshi, or other officials propose to cover for their back-handed collusion with the Burmese junta & Suu Kyi.

Photo is Rohingya refugee with his two kids. It is what he wants for their future that matters. Period.

(Photo from Twitter)

You just can’t make blanket condemnations of the Indian people on my wall. There are a billion Indians, including some of the most oppressed people in the world like child workers, homeless people, slum dwellers, dispossessed farmers, indigenous people, & oppressed castes. Indians aren’t all deranged nationalists; many are engaged in organizing against caste oppression, the growing militarization of India, the persecution of Muslims, the attempts to deport Rohingya refugees, the occupation of Kashmir, the alliances with Burma, Israel, the US. If you want to criticize the government of India or the corruption of Hindutva nationalists, go at them with vehemence but don’t condemn “Indians” without clarifying which ones you mean or your condemnations lend themselves to misunderstanding. Do a lot of them support Modi? The purpose of political organizing is to win them over or overwhelm & defeat their corruption with the political power of the oppressed.

Good luck to those dumb-assed nationalists trying to write the Taj Mahal out of Indian history because it’s a Muslim mausoleum. Nationalism & racism make you stupid. Really stupid.

It’s so remarkable that the pregnant American woman biked her little kids to safety from the wild fires. As of a week ago, an estimated 18,523 pregnant Rohingya women fleeing for their lives entered Bangladesh, many of them carrying toddlers.

We should take a moment to pay tribute to these remarkable women & to the sacredness of mother love.

(Photo from Mohammadi News Agency)

The UN refugee agency announced today that an estimated 582,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since August 25th; that 10,000 to 15,000 have crossed just since Sunday night at only one crossing; that up to 15,000 are still stranded on the Burma side of the border. Several other sources report that there is no let-up at all in the surge of Rohingya fleeing for their lives from villages which are still being torched.

Photo is a Rohingya child living without shelter in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Stand with the Rohingya people against genocide & for full human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

A woman who was 9-months pregnant biked her two toddlers out of the wild fire zone in California. She gave birth today. God bless that momma & baby.

Are any of my professor friends in the US or Canada willing to advise an Indian scholar how to obtain a post-doctoral scholarship? If so, can you let me know & I’ll link you to the person?

The common denominator in libertarian politics: they support regimes against popular opposition. You are a libertarian, or possibly a Stalinist, if you support the Assad dictatorship, the repressive Putin regime, the Venezuelan government against protesters, the Burmese junta carrying out genocide, the Duterte government in its death squads against the poor & martial law against Muslims, the Israeli government by claiming there is no apartheid & by opposing BDS, or Trump against the hundreds of thousands protesting him. It is the iron law of libertarianism to support governments in the name of fighting the elite.