Trump’s inauguration planner said the event will have a “soft sensuality” & won’t be a “circus-like celebration” with celebrities. Kind of like a cross between a funeral wake & the Vampire’s Ball.

If you listen to the vituperations of politicians & emboldened nationalists & fascists against allowing refugees to enter Europe or the US, the highest traditions of human civilization are imperiled by the hordes of mostly Muslim war refugees. There are almost certainly terrorists hiding among them, maybe even the head-chopping kind. But even if there aren’t any terrorists camouflaged as war-traumatized refugees, allowing so many Muslims to enter with their hijabs & their conservative ways would threaten cultural monotony & create social havoc. Hasn’t multiculturalism made enough of a mess without the Muslims?

It would be useful if they would elaborate those highest traditions of human civilization. Do they mean the US-NATO wars & massive bombing creating all the refugees? The multinational looting that dispossesses & makes millions desperate enough to flee to another continent? The civilized politics that lets thousands drown or live outside in the freezing cold?

This group of refugees eating al fresco in a snow storm at sub-zero temperatures (-20 C / -4 F) are part of 7,000 Afghan, Iraqi, & Syrian refugees in Belgrade, Serbia, hoping to be allowed entrance to Hungary which is 2-1/2 hours away by car; they’re all on foot. Hungary doesn’t want them & long ago made that quite clear by building a razor wire fence with heat-sensitive cameras, surveillance helicopters, patrolled by thousands of soldiers.

There are some refugee tent camps near Belgrade & the UN refugee agency is there handing out blankets & counting. Counting seems to be its highest mission in life & it can’t even get that right since there aren’t enough tents. The camps are so overcrowded that only women & children can get in & men are forced to live & sleep al fresco or in abandoned warehouses that are likely filthy rat-infested fire traps.

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders personnel are there to provide medical care–those are the very doctors Assadists are now campaigning against as stooges for US-NATO. The doctors say a lot of what they’re treating are respiratory infections like sinusitis & bronchitis: runny noses, phlegm, sore throat, upper chest pain, burning sinuses. It must be a living hell.

The highest traditions of human civilization include asylum for refugees, not this kind of barbarism.

Immigration is a human right. Asylum is an obligation. Open the damn borders.

(Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Someone asked me to do a post about Meryl Streep because there are so many posts about her speech, some admiring, some ridiculing her.

Well if today were not the 20th anniversary of my beloved brother Paul’s suicide & if I hadn’t recently seen the video of a young man with learning disabilities being tortured or read of two other instances of young people with learning disabilities being ridiculed, I might not honor the request to write a post about her speech. But I did want to write a tribute to my brother whose loss was one of the most wrenching of my life so I shall combine the two.

Meryl Streep is what she is & she ain’t what she ain’t. She & I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of questions. That’s how it goes. But the 30 seconds in her speech about the humiliation of a disabled reporter by Trump & her succinct condemnation of the power relationship involved in abuse was moving & powerful so why would anyone ridicule her for saying it? Humiliation is the way of the world for the oppressed so there can never be enough condemnations.

My brother took his own life by stabbing himself in the stomach after 40 years of being ridiculed & tormented as a person with disability. He was taunted all his life as a “retard” & made to feel small & worthless. He was intelligent, insightful, witty, generous, & so sweet & kind, but being humiliated for being disabled made him hate himself so much he overcame the elemental human instinct for survival. He lived with more psychic pain than most can imagine–or that only the oppressed can imagine–because he didn’t have the sense of self & social power to defend himself. He knew he was worth something as a human being but he knew he would never get others to understand that.

With great indignation, he would tell me how companions would ply him with alcohol, shave off his mustache which was his pride, & then drop him off on the side of the highway far out of town in the middle of night & the middle of winter. That was his life. That’s the life of those with disability & of the oppressed if they don’t have the power to defend themselves.

So I put aside all the criticisms of Meryl Streep & tip my hat to her because despite all her privilege she understands how shameful & vile it is to humiliate & ridicule someone without the social or psychic power to defend themselves & she spoke out against it. Maybe she doesn’t get a lot of things but she gets that. Paul would have been so heartened if he had heard her words. May his sweet soul RIP.

People who don’t understand the disputes over Syria speak of balance & false binaries & insist that in the end we all want the same thing. No we don’t. Nothing will put this movement back together again. It’s a rude awakening but you cannot play both sides of the street when the polarization is revolution versus counter-revolution.

Do you stand with the Syrian revolution of working people against Assad’s gulag, forced disappearances, torture, repression, death squads & summary executions?

Or do you stand with Assad’s military counter-revolution taunting the revolution as a lie & opposition to him all head-choppers? There is no proxy regime change war against Assad. It is a proxy war against the revolution where Russia, the US, & the most repressive forces in the Middle East play their part because counter-revolution is the one thing they agree on.

A revolutionary victory against dictatorship in Syria would resonate & change the relationship of forces throughout the world to the advantage of the oppressed. The Syrian revolution is the last one standing of the Arab Spring, so mercilessly were the others reversed by the same counter-revolutionary forces. A defeat would be catastrophic throughout the Middle East & leave Palestinians more isolated than ever.

Those who blither on about vilifying Russia, who claim Israel’s schemes for expansion are behind the war in Syria, who rattle on about Wahhabism, Salafism & other things they know nothing about, who rail against US death squads but cheer on Russian bombers, have become the Greek chorus for Assad’s counter-revolution. They turn principled politics into parody & make a mockery of revolution against dictatorship.

Those who take politics seriously face the harsh reality that when it comes to the uncompromising opposition between revolution & counter-revolution there is no middle way.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, & everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

–from The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

Does this remind you of the Syria debate, as it does me?

After seeing what Trump tweeted in response to Meryl Streep one must seriously ask how the hell the US ruling elite can allow him to be president. Or at least, how they can allow him to keep that Twitter account.

The guy has no dignity, no restraint, & is driven by narcissism. We have four more years to put up with this rubbish & abuse?

The things you learn by working up your courage to read corporate media:

This is Putin giving Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov, the prestigious Order of Honour, a Russian state medal in 2013. The Surgeon has been the leader of the Night Wolves motorcycle club since the Soviet era. Putin, a close friend of The Surgeon, often rides with the group.

The Night Wolves are a business enterprise that organize rock concerts, run tattoo parlors, have a clothing line, & put on patriotic motorcycle exhibitions. They are also a fascist group aligned closely with the conservatism of the Russian Orthodox Church & actively involved in Russian right-wing politics, especially to promote Putin’s foreign military operations.

In return, the Kremlin bankrolls the group to the tune of “several hundred million rubles a year.” The Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalniy posted evidence that in just 18 months between 2013 & 2014 the Night Wolves received over US $1.1million in Kremlin grants.

The Surgeon is a real non-conformist rebel in Russia combining capitalist competitive smarts with an ardent admiration for the politics of Joseph Stalin who he calls a “supreme historical & mystical figure of whom Russia’s enemies are still afraid, despite the fact he is dead.” He’s an outspoken nationalist who calls Western leaders “Satanists” bent on Russia’s humiliation. He is also a proud homophobe who rants against “faggots” & a misogynist who famously told Russian NTV: “We have to burn out all the feminism & homosexuality from our Orthodox Christian country with hot steel.”

Does anybody really want to stand with this guy? Can we hear some more rah-rah for Putin?

You can read more about this vile fascist creature in: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/putins-angels-inside-russias-most-infamous-motorcycle-club-20151008

(Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images)

No I did not threaten violence for disagreeing with me on Syria. Why should I when there’s a block button on hand? Why would I when I’m only 5’2″ & unlikely to come out on the better end of a fisticuffs?

Assad supporters, even the most ardent, take great umbrage at being called Assadists. Would they prefer being called fascists? If they really do want peace on earth & their Assadism is based on ignorance that’s just swell but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re marching with fascists, nationalists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes & are part of ushering in massive defeats for freedom struggles around the world.

If you don’t understand Syria, don’t take a position in support of Assad. The road to hell is paved less with good intentions & more with those who jumped on the bandwagon to be trendy.

I just came back from reading tabloids in the supermarket checkout line & everything corporate media tells us is a lie.