Where on Planet Armageddon might this be?

This conflagration is in Valparaiso, Chile, about 60 miles (100 km) from Santiago. It’s a port city with a metropolitan population of one million people. A raging fire broke out there last night which burned down many homes & forced hundreds to evacuate.
Investigators haven’t determined the cause of the fire but say the fire was fueled by trash mounds dumped in ravines that run throughout the city as well as by the flammable wooden structures of the slums.

The Chilean Interior Minister made a public statement blaming it on people who throw their trash into the gullies. He neglected to mention that under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet the entire sanitation system in Chile was privatized, a hallmark of neoliberal urban economics. That means it does not exist for the slums or poorer neighborhoods & has not for nearly 40 years.

This is neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

(Photo by Christian Miranda/AFP/Getty Images)

The barbaric phase of capitalism:

This overcrowded raft, 36 nautical miles (67 km/42 mi) off the coast of Libya, was drifting out of control yesterday with 112 African refugees aboard. Among the passengers were two pregnant women & five children, including a baby.

That Italian naval vessel behind it apparently thinks it’s on a Mediterranean cruise while the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms rescue ship (a private rescue operation) is attempting to reach the raft to rescue the refugees. All of the 112 people were taken on board the Proactiva ship, an old fishing vessel.

There’s a question hovering in the air about the sailors working those European & NATO ships deployed there to turn back refugees. They endanger the lives of the refugees & must sometimes watch them drown. Do they sustain the same mental health issues like PTSD, the addiction problems, the suicide rate, the violence problems that war veterans do?

Open the damn borders. Immigration is a human right. Asylum is an imperative of civilization.

(Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

“”Rothschild banksters” is a dog whistle, cult code, or secret handshake for those who believe that “the main enemy” are the Jews. Remember what August Bebel said about antisemitism. Not just fools. Renegades.”

from Henry Lowi

PS: Bebel said “Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.”

I remember when Tariq Ali was a leading voice on the left. He’s been inertial for a while; that can happen when you get guru status. But something happened on the road to Damascus.

Now he posts videos of Eva Bartlett & allows comments like this to stand on his wall unchallenged: “Assad has been vilified purely because he won’t play along with the Rothschild banksters?”

Life moves on. People change. The lesson is: no gurus, no masters, no groveling. Find teachers, learn to listen carefully, study & don’t be glib, keep your dignity & most of all learn to think for yourself.

Did you ever think you’d see the day when people who think they’re progressives stand in phalanxes of solidarity with Russia pumping their fists in anger at the US over emails whilst cheering on Syrian war planes bombing civilians in the Wadi Barada valley?

It gets worse: they aren’t just cheering on Syria but are acting as its propaganda ministry on social media by claiming those civilians are all Al-Qaeda who poisoned the water supply to Damascus with diesel. Civilians & rebels in Wadi Barada have allowed government engineers to maintain & operate the water pumping station in an area they’ve controlled since 2012. They say government bombers damaged the pumping station. Doesn’t that explanation make a hell of a lot more sense?

But this is the era of post-truth truthiness & zombie politics–& the most unspeakable betrayals of principles & human solidarity where the “anti-imperialists” swear allegiance to war planes, special forces, dictators, & death squads.

Give us a liberal any day–who holds human life in the highest esteem, who can distinguish between healthy skepticism & paranoia, who hasn’t lost their bearings & their marbles groveling over gurus who’ve long since grown jaded & dull–over ten-thousand “anti-imperialists” on the march to the right.

There’s a guy on Twitter says Eva Bartlett wears an “I love Bashar” bracelet. Actually she has that tattooed on her ass. The poor thing’s a real groveler.

It’s very sad to hear John Berger died today at the age of 90. He was introduced to me in the late 60s by a Palestinian artist friend & I can barely remember now when his writings were not a part of my life.
He’s been writing since the 50s & was still publishing work this year. My favorites were his books on Picasso, on cubism, on the role of artists in society, on ‘seeing’ animals, & all his books on looking & seeing.

He was unlike any other: always revelatory, visionary, & profoundly humanist. His critiques never sucked the life out of art as so many do but only enriched understanding. He gave us new ways of seeing art but also insight into the very nature of human perception which I have found invaluable in art & in politics.

He was a marvelous writer who I loved but was never nosy enough to learn much about. I honestly know nothing about him personally except he was English, a socialist, & lived somewhere in Switzerland.

May he Rest In Peace. He left an enduring, extraordinary legacy.

In response to Eva Bartlett & other Assadists who say you cannot have informed opinion on Syria unless you’ve traveled there: I have never been to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Gaza, or any of the countries where the US does or has militarily intervened. That has never stopped me & thousands of others from organizing opposition to all those wars.

The only people who use that argument–like my three brothers who fought in Vietnam–are right-wingers who support US wars. It’s not just nonsense but it’s war-mongering nonsense to claim one has to go to Syria to understand. But if I did go to Syria, it sure as hell wouldn’t be under the aegis of Assad & protected by his army because that would be just too compromising for a committed antiwar activist.

Besides, there are activists & revolutionists in Syria as well as among refugees who oppose not fraternize with dictators & who can be trusted for on the ground reports.

Eva Bartlett, Assad’s very own Ann Coulter, is upset so many think she’s on his payroll. Well if it isn’t from him, who is she getting checks from?

She says she slowly saves her money to afford several trips a year to Syria. Saves her money from what? Can she show an income report from any job at all? Ever?

And still we wonder: why does the Assad regime–ranked 177 out of 180 countries in freedom for reporters–favor the services of Bartlett & Beeley so highly that they are always accompanied by Assad officials & Syrian military security?

You can learn a lot from reading that lying-assed mainstream media. Like: the UN refugee agency just reported the number of refugees who drowned crossing the Mediterranean in 2016 was 5,022 people.

Now we find out that there is no reliable data because there is no system for knowing how many people are being packed into those plastic rafts & rickety death traps by illegal traffickers. So according to rescuers involved, ‘thousands of people remain unaccounted for after attempting the deadly Mediterranean Sea crossing.’

That is just like May 2015 in the Andaman Sea where thousands of Rohingya refugees adrift without water & food were abandoned & there is not yet an accounting by any human rights or international agency.

Refugee rights is one of the most important human rights issues of our times. Either we get it right or we’re all going down.
Open the damn borders. Immigration is a human right. Refugee asylum is a duty.