Abolish slavery 2012?

Did you ever imagine that in 2012 it would be necessary to protest against slavery!? Slavery was history & in the US it was a buried past, not taught in schools, often justified by historians as good for slaves, considered guilt-baiting & living in the past if it was raised. And yet, this group is protesting outside the Brazilian Parliament (on Tuesday) where they’re debating a constitutional amendment on whether to penalize slaveholders by confiscating their property. Justice would be better served if the slaves were allowed to vote on the amendment (no debate would be required!) & determine the punishment rather than having the golfing partners of the slaveholders adjudicate! (Photo by Eraldo Peres/AP)

The baby face of immigration

Deportations of undocumented immigrants have increased dramatically under the Obama regime. Nearly 400,000 people were deported in 2011, including thousands of parents forced to leave their children. As a result 5,100 children entered the US foster care system which is already in shambles & in dire need of suitable foster parents. Now there is a baffling surge in unaccompanied children migrating from Mexico & Central America to the US. None of the usual experts understand why this increase is happening. Children have always migrated to seek refuge or reunite with parents but the dramatic increase is unsettling even jaded immigration officials. The US Department of Health & Human Services has taken in 7,000 to 8,000 unaccompanied immigrant children each of the past three years but in the first quarter of 2012 alone took in 5,252 children (double the same period last year). This staggering reality was highlighted when federal officials moved 200 unescorted children to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for  housing more like detention than human services. This young girl is headed to the US from Central America. Her vulnerability will be preyed on &/or she will survive by the kindness of strangers along the way. The remarkable thing is that so many children actually make it across the border. Immigration is a human right. (Photo by Chico Sanchez, from “Brothers on the Road”)

Colored water cannon assault

Government employees in Jammu & Kashmir staged a strike in Srinagar, India in April against the state government, demanding payment of arrears in wages, that all temporary employees be made permanent, & to raise the retirement age by two years because India has a weak social security net. The government came out full force, deploying riot & paramilitary police, setting up barricades to prevent strikers from assembling, & using water cannons with purple water (undoubtedly loaded with toxic chemicals) against strikers. Water cannons are extremely aggressive weapons causing a number of injuries including to eyes, internal organs, & broken bones. Over a dozen workers were injured & 150 arrested during the protest. Shopkeepers were forced to close their shops after the colored water interfered with business & they strongly objected to its use.  Despite police aggression, the strike paralyzed work at government offices so the strikers were back out today since their demands have not been met. Riot police once again attacked them with the water cannons & purple water. Here a striker is knocked over by the assault & moments later is helped up by a fellow worker. One marvels at the camaraderie, courage, & tenacity of these strikers. (Photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP)

We are human beings, we are not beasts

Behind this photo of impoverished residents fighting government eviction in Katmandu, Nepal is a story of racism, betrayal, & the bankruptcy & treachery of Maoism in Nepal. When the Maoists declared a “People’s War” against feudalism in 1996, Nepal was run by a deranged monarch. They promised to trounce monarchy, set up a republic, & end gender & caste discrimination against Dalits who comprise over 20% of the population but 80% of the most impoverished Nepalese. Caste discrimination (“untouchability”) relegated Dalits to scavenging, handling dead animals or human waste (often with bare hands), exclusion from temples & other public places, denial of land ownership. As a result of landlessness, Dalits were employed as farm labor, trapped in an agricultural system of debt bondage, & subject to all forms of extreme violence. In response to the 10-year long, destructive, Maoist-led war in the countryside, the decrepit monarch (backed by arms from the US & India) declared martial law & instituted a military reign of terror which took the heaviest toll on Dalits. Descriptions of the violence they endured from both sides in the conflict are wrenching, with sexual violence against Dalit women used as a weapon of war, & the exodus of thousands of Dalits to the cities as squatter colonies. The Maoists eventually usurped the king & took over the government. Content with unseating the king from his throne, they did nothing to alter social relations or keep their promises to the Dalits but in fact, bowed fealty to a new master--the IMF & neoliberalism--moving from armed rebels with a mouth full of promises to thugs for neoliberalism. In this photo, 1,500 Dalits are being forcibly evicted from the Bagmati riverbank by riot cops & bull dozers in the first phase of a government-ordered scheme to make room for major infrastructure projects, including a luxury park. The government intends to eventually evict 40 such settlements, with an estimated 20,000 people. As you can see from this photo, the residents are not standing by idly as their homes are bulldozed--but rocks are no match for riot cops & bull dozers. The Dalit struggle against racism is strongly inspired & influenced by the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The anthemic words of a Black freedom fighter in the Attica Prison revolt could just as well be spoken by the Dalits of Nepal: (We are human beings.) “We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such....What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed.”  (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)

Why should Cleveland have all the fun?

In a rare public appearance & under the influence of too much Dom Pérignon, some local oligarchs recently went out cavorting. But when they showed up in the town square with their bony asses, they were made unwelcome by the crowds hissing & booing. Mind you, they weren’t attacked with tear gas or water cannons, or stink bombs, like their riot cops do to us. It might have been a golden moment lost for democracy. They should have been lined up against the wall & pummeled with paint bombs & horse manure. The reticence of the citizenry, you can be assured, was due entirely to civility & delicacy (the oligarchs smell bad enough as it is). And when they’re taken down, the citizens of this fair city wanted it to be a more global & shared experience. They were overheard to say, “Why should we have all the fun!?” (Photo by Luis Gene/AFP)

US so busy liberating women, they forgot the kids!

Now this is a moment that really softens you up for war propaganda about all the US is accomplishing in Afghanistan. This little boy is eating lunch in the dining hall at a refugee camp in Kabul. The US, under the leadership of Clinton & Obama, is so busy liberating Afghan women with that beauty parlor they set up, that they forgot there are children in Afghanistan!? The fact that the little guy’s shoes are on backwards would normally be one of those endearing things kids do but here may well signify neglect from being orphaned by the war. (Photo by Ahmad Jamshid/AP)

Why the world needs changing

A young girl at the Bengali new year celebration in Bangladesh (April 14th). Posted to remind us why the world needs changing: to honor children & create a world suitable for all of them to live & love in.

And yet another "unsanctioned" protest in Russia

The caption to this photo in a British newspaper reads, “Riot police detain an opposition supporter during an unsanctioned protest in Moscow.” We can put aside for the moment that since the French Revolution free speech & assembly are considered democratic & human rights by most people (if not most regimes) & that signifying protests as “unsanctioned” means state repression of those rights. In the Soviet era, western media lauded such “unsanctioned” protests to illustrate the evils of communism. Good to know media was just blowing smoke & we haven’t misjudged them all these years as blow hards for the oligarchs.  (Photo by Denis Sinyakov/Reuters)

Please take a moment to sign a petition to help this orangutan get home

This photo is from the Surabaya Zoo in Surabaya, Indonesia, a hell hole where over 4,000 animals are held captive in cramped cement cages, feed only on peanuts thrown at them by spectators, suffer from untreated diseases & injuries, disabilities, & lack of exercise, & die at the rate of 15 to 25 animals a month. An interim & probably short-term team was sent in to improve conditions (at least until animal welfare activists stop making a stink about the neglect). Here Sinyo, a 10-year-old orangutan is being bathed by a zookeeper. You can help the little guy get back to the forest where he belongs by signing this petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-indonesia-close-surabaya-zoo  (Photo by Fully Handoko/EPA)

Neoliberal waste management

Waste management is considered a superfluous social service under neoliberalism so this small boy has to cool off on a hot day in the the polluted waters of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Plastic & paper debris being eaten by fish & birds is bad enough but the raw sewage contaminates & spreads disease, including to small children. Degradation of the environment which imperils animal & human life is a feature of the plunder which places oligarchic wealth over the welfare of humans & all living things.  (Photo by Cheryl Ravelo/Reuters)

Socialist Hollande wins French presidency

Francois Hollande has been elected president of France, the country's first Socialist leader in nearly two decades.
Addressing jubilant supporters in the French capital, Paris, he called for a change in Europe's austerity direction.
Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons reports.

Merde & hallelujah!

Merde, merde, merde, mercy me! So we don’t have Monsieur Psychozy Le Pew to kick around any more! And Marquis de Strauss-Kahn is still trying to get his pants up before he gives his take on all this. But, mon Dieu! After all that, the French electorate is left with the likes of J. Alfred Prufrock as president!? ("Do I dare to eat a peach?") So while France is the folly Bergère of campaigns & the US remains a traveling clown car, we commiserate, France. We really do & we know just how you feel. But isn’t it time we both started walking like the Egyptians? (Photo by Reuters at the glorious moment of Psychozy’s defeat)

Canoodling in Pyongyang

If you believe all the US network reporters now sending hushed, clandestine messages from the middle of Pyongyang's central square, you’d think the North Koreans did nothing all day but weep & wail about the death of Kim Jong-il & goose step all over town singing “No Motherland Without You”. But here we have a couple canoodling in the park after a badminton game. Who knew they still had bourgeois things like love over there!? Makes you wonder about a lot of things. After Kim Jong-il didn’t flinch against US threats at the 2000 summit with none other than Madeline Albright, the US authorized a psychological profile showing his fearlessness in the face of sanctions proved he was antisocial, paranoid, sadistic, narcissistic, schizoid like Saddam Hussein. But much more like Madeline Albright, who said the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from US sanctions was “worth it” to achieve US policy objectives. There’s no question the North Korean regime is repressive but it’s nowhere near as dangerous globally as the US regime. It’s up to the people of North Korea to change their government & not a US right to bomb who doesn’t respect their bullying & hegemony. (And since the passage by Obama of the NDAA, that opinion is also hushed & clandestine.) (Photo by Ng Han Guan)

Cheering subjects greet Betty Windsor

Things have gotten embarrassing for Betty & Fullup Windsor on their diamond jubilee tour of England. Cheering crowds just aren’t materializing so they’ve had to commandeer Boy & Girl Scouts, bribe innocent school children with sweets, & blow up inflatable corgi dogs to act as the rah rah chorus. Problem is, Betty’s got some real corgis of her own & she’ll see right through this ruse. If they really want to fool her they’ll have to make a throng of inflatable Tories. It'll be hard to distinguish helium-filled blow up dolls from the real McCoy. (Photo by Ben Bichall/WPA Pool)

Olmert says ‘superior powers’ — U.S. Israel lobby– took him out in 2009

Phil Weiss (Mondoweiss)

Olmert says American cash knocked him out of office in 2009. He spoke to Christiane Amanpour, and said his peace proposals in 2008 are what unnerved these rich Americans. He won't name names but he means Sheldon Adelson among others, objecting to any Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem. Remember that Adelson helped found One Jerusalem after the Clinton talks, and gave hundreds of thousands to the Republican Party before the 2000 elections.

Now I'm waiting for Olmert to say what Americans don't want to hear, that the Israel lobby hurt Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. Maybe that way American media would finally cover this large presence in our politics. Oh and then I want Olmert to complain about the dual loyalty problem of American supporters of Israel.
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Carlos Latuff on Hollywood

US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations

UN's correspondent on indigenous peoples urges government to act to combat 'racial discrimination' felt by Native Americans
The Guardian

A Native American at his home on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, which has some of the US's poorest living conditions. Photograph: Jennifer Brown/Star Ledger/Corbis

A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.

James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.

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How the media (Yahoo here) manipulates the opinion on Palestine

See if you can a direct relation between the photo (and more specifically the caption) and the article about the 10 Palestinians on hunger strike transferred to hospital it's alluding to illustrate. ..Innocent isn't it?
Here

Policy of starvation: Israel destroys dairy farm in occupied Palestine

Destruction of dairy farm in Khaled al Wardeh May 1, 2012

May Day destruction

Annie Robbins (Mondoweis)

On May Day, a day in Israel in which all government offices are closed, in the village of Khaled al Wardeh outside Hebron, the Israeli military demolished a dairy farm.

Receiving this horrific story via my inbox today threw me. I googled it over and over again and was astounded that this report, from the Christian Peacemakers, was the only documentation of a crime that should shock the conscience of humanity: the demolition of a whole dairy farm, the livelihood of 4 families, who provide sustenance for a much wider population. Look at this farm! Look at it and think of farms in your country. Gone, destroyed, for what? What could possibly justify this act?

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Thousands in Jordan call for end of peace treaty with Israel

Thousands of Jordanians took to the streets on Friday demanding an end to the country's 18-year-old Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel.

In a series of nationwide protests, leftist and Islamist activists urged Amman to cut ties with Israel, burning Israeli flags and chanting "death, death to Israel" and "the people want an end to Wadi Araba."

Protesters rallied in seven cities across the country, urging authorities to expel the Israeli ambassador from Amman, chanting "no to a Zionist embassy on our land."

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Ehud Olmert to CNN: Right-wing Americans thwarted Israeli-Palestinian peace accord

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tells CNN that right-wing extremists from the United States toppled his government with “millions and millions of dollars” in order to thwart his attempt to reach a lasting peace agreement with the Palestinians.

In the interview Olmert gave CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that aired on Friday, Olmert said that his peace plan was supported by a majority of Israelis and that it could have been, and still can be, implemented were it not for “superior powers” in the U.S. which he would not name.
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The road forward for suffering humanity

Look at these Egyptian protestors in hard hats & helmets using metal barricades to shield against the water cannons & tear gas of military troops! It has been a long time since the world has seen such intransigent & fearless opposition to tyranny. The extreme violence the Egyptian revolution faces is because the oligarchs learn from history & understand from the past that when people rise up en masse to defy oppression, it inspires suffering humanity to rebellion around the world. The oligarchs know the world is watching & are deploying not just troops but all manner of treachery & conniving to thwart democracy in Egypt. Though revolutions cannot be won without courage, they cannot be won by courage alone. A plan is needed to unite the disparate political forces the Egyptian military, US, & other reactionary regimes are trying to play off against each other & to expose & isolate those forces making devil’s pacts with the military to gain advantage. The upcoming elections are the flashpoint of current protests because many activists understand they are a snow job by the military to demobilize protest & are by no means a return to civilian & democratic rule.   The Egyptian revolution is a beacon to all who want to build a world suitable for human beings to live & love in. Their struggle is our struggle, their victory ours too. (Photo by Hamada Elrasam/AP)

Poetry lost in plunder

While the IMF gloats over all the foreign investment in Kenya--with new malls, KFCs, Apple stores, factories--every day 6,000 of over 1 million slum dwellers living in Dandora, a suburb of Nairobi (East Africa’s most populous city) start at 5 am scavenging through the only municipal dump for anything that can be sold for recycling. A day’s back-breaking labor will earn each USD $2.50 a day. Waste management plans are excluded in IMF plundering programs & dumpsites have become a way for millions of people around the world to survive by doing the dirty work for recycling companies.  Pickers spend all day bent over on their knees sorting through metal, rubber, food garbage, plastics, meat bones, electronics--with pigs, dogs, & birds competing side by side with the human scavengers.The place is an environmental hell hole; a 2007 UN study found soil samples contain dangerous levels of lead. Hundreds of kids living near the dump have high concentrations of lead in their blood & suffer from respiratory problems like asthma. The air is putrid from the overwhelming stench of the rotting debris of 4 million people & biogas steam & smoke emitted from burning chemicals & plastics. With all the investment pouring into Kenya & the recent discovery of oil, the big talkers are predicting Kenya will become an economic powerhouse in East Africa. But, of course, only the local oligarchs & foreign investors will derive any benefit at all from all that. The remarkable moment captured in this photo is of a woman scavenger stopping to read a book she came across in the stinking debris. She told the reporter she likes to read & in desperation, even reads industrial parts catalogs. She says it gives her something else to do beside picking trash. In a humane world, she might well have been a scholar, a scientist, a poet. Like most poor people, she probably has no sense of her potential & certainly no possibility of realizing it under this system. Who knows what beauty she would have created were she not compelled to pick through the stinking decay of a rotten system!?  (Photo by Micah Albert/Pulitzer Center)

Children fair game for agribusiness

In a move breathtaking in its malignancy, the Obama administration just withdrew a proposal to the Department of Labor (DOL) to update safety laws for child farm workers. Contrary to popular misconception, child labor is not entirely illegal in the US. Outside of agriculture, children must be at least 16-years-old to work (14 & 15-year-olds can work as cashiers, grocery baggers, car washers). Children of any age are allowed to work on family farms without restrictions but in agribusiness, with an estimated 800,000 child workers, there are regulations for children under 16-years-old, though they are not monitored or enforced. In formulating the updates, extensive research was done on safety & health hazards for children on industrial farms. They are exposed to pesticides (often sprayed directly by planes as they work), snake & insect bites, razor-sharp tools & lack of safety equipment, dangerous farm machinery (without safety devices like seat belts or roll-over bars), extreme heat, chemicals & explosives, work at extreme heights in silos & grain storage facilities, work in manure pits (with E. coli contamination).  Exploitation of child labor is rampant: age restrictions are ignored (as can be seen in this photo of a US cotton worker); children often work 10 or more hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week, & at the peak of harvest, daylight to dusk; they are paid less than the minimum wage; they are not provided with drinking water & toilets. As a result accidents are frequent, maiming common, deaths gruesome. Farmworker children have high incidences of pesticide-related respiratory & digestive diseases, headaches, burning eyes, as well as brain damage, & death. Long-term pesticide exposure in adults is associated with cancer, neurologic problems, & reproductive problems.The racism of this decision by the Obama administration cannot be denied since 85% of crop workers in the US are Latino. Are these children of no value? The Labor Department said farmers & ranchers complained that the new regulations would negatively impact family-owned farms but since these farms were always specifically exempted from regulation we can be certain it was agribusiness interests who opposed safety protection for small children, which were anyway unlikely to be enforced. This cynicism at the expense of little kids says so much about the Obama administration. Ending the abomination of child labor has to be one of our most important commitments.

Amazons or zombies

There’s been a spate of articles recently about the problems women face in academia, particularly science. Complaints by women cover the gamut from lewd innuendoes & sexual abuse to put downs & disdain for women’s intellectual work. One prominent neurobiologist who transgendered from woman to man has written damningly of the difference in treatment he received as a woman. Misogyny in science matters since they claim authority to challenge or confirm scientific bases to differences between the genders. It’s one thing for a phony science like evolutionary psychology (evo psycho) to twist the theory of evolution & go hog wild with speculations to prove women have weaker cognitive skills. It’s another thing when neurobiologists start talking this stuff. Evo psycho theory is treated in the media like scientifically established fact: women are verbal, empathic, people-oriented (unsuited to science); men are spatial, object-oriented (well suited to science). Why do women always come out on the remedial end of these comparisons!? The most notorious proponent of the ‘women are weak-minded’ theory is Lawrence Summers, former President of Harvard (now one of Obama’s gang) who said women are not represented on science & math faculties because they’re biologically unsuited. Steven Pinker, the Harvard evo psycho guy (a sloppy scholar & something of an ass), says women should not be discriminated against just because they’re inferior. He adds elitism to misogyny saying, “Most women are not qualified to be math professors at Harvard because most men aren't qualified to be math professors at Harvard.” True enough if the number of people competing for the jobs are only 1% of the population. He thinks the problem might be hormones--estrogen makes us stupid, especially during menstruation; testosterone gives men better spatial skills & presumably more aggression. You don’t need tenure at Harvard to come up with this stuff. Every bozo nursing a grudge against women says the same thing. But gender stereotypes busted by feminism are now back with a vengeance & this crap is showing up in other science literature. Simon Baron-Cohen, an English psychopathologist who studies autism argues it is an extreme form of the male brain based on the idiotic people/inanimate object dichotomy that serves neither gender. Another group of scientists at the University of California claim their “voxel-based morphometric analysis of MRI data” shows women have more white matter (considered passive tissue coordinating communication between brain regions) & men more gray matter (associated with cognition) involved in intelligence. You can get as morphometric as you like but it still comes out baloney to justify why women should stick to teaching & social service jobs & let men run the world. This is not just a problem for women scientists & academics. Woman have to operate in every sphere at odds with good old boy networks where women are not seen or heard unless they flatter & defer. So though this photo of zombie-like, dehumanized models at Sydney, Australia Fashion Week is disturbing, it is also a metaphor, a warning, & a call to arms. Eyes are the window of the soul, here exaggerated to emphasize emptiness & conformity. Time for the Amazons to start marching. (Photo by Tim Wimborn)

Leave the weapons at home

Am I wrong to laugh? An Oakland, CA cop arrayed in battle gear shows up a peaceful protest armed with any number of assaultive weapons & gets a mug full of paint. Come in peace next time & this doesn’t have to happen. (Photo by Justin Sullivan)

Good riddance!

Newt Gingrich is dropping out of the race, leaving Mitt Rummey the last clown standing. It’s gotta be a hurting thing when a man of that kind whips you in the polls. If our man had an ounce of good sense he would take this as a signal to drop out of politics altogether but good sense is the least of Newt’s deficiencies. We know the Newt type well. He was taught to overcome the adversity of a lousy personality by being a bully & that’s all there is say about him. Except, “good riddance”.  (Photo by Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT)

From exclusion to leadership

This protestor in a wheelchair is leading a chant before the Los Angeles march sets off. This is something we’ve seen in the revolutions of Egypt & Yemen, in protests in Greece, Bolivia, the UK, & US which is surely the result of decades now of people with disability battling prejudice, discrimination, & exclusion. They’re not just taking their place; they’re in the front lines. (Photo by Genaro Molina/LATimes)

International Labor Day/May Day march in LA

Well look at this glorious thing! Occupy meets labor strike (of LA airport workers) meets immigration rights in the International Labor Day/May Day march in Los Angeles. Even the LA Times reported the police presence at a peaceful protest was excessive. When you come to a legal protest arrayed in full riot gear, it could also be called provocative & the only way to confront that is massively & peacefully to demand & defend our democratic right of free speech & assembly. (Photo by Genaro Molina/LATimes)

"Unidentified assailants": another name for undercover cops

In the early morning today, thugs attacked protestors occupying near the defense ministry in Cairo calling for an end to military rule. Twenty people are reported dead so far & over 50 are injured. Military officials claim the assailants are unidentified & they deployed troops to prevent violence by forming a cordon between the protestors & attackers. The junta is hoping the rest of us are as credulous as the media feigns. Seeing as the military deployed undercover thugs to attack protestors demanding the removal of Mubarak last year, & they have often & openly attacked protestors, particularly targeting women, we can be assured many of these unidentified thugs are operating as agents of the state. Here is a scene we see repeated around the world (which never fails to inspire) of democracy protestors imperiling their own safety to help an injured brother. (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP)

They've come not to hail Betty

It was predictable that this diamond jubilee thing would tire long before it began to be a pleasure. One can hardly keep up with the folly. Apparently they’re prevailing on Boy Scout & Brownie troops around the realm as a rah rah chorus on Betty Windsor’s tour. This is a rally in Yeovil, England, which is a center of the aircraft & defense industries so it well may be a hot bed of Toryism. Yeovil is noted for its paleolithic ruins so regrettably, it may also be a hot bed of the living dead. Or is there no distinction between them? We think we have it on good authority that these young girls have come not to hail Betty but to taunt her. (Photo by Chris Jackson)

Riot cops get paint bombed

Now here’s a thing you just never get tired of seeing. Last year, we saw riot cops drenched in red paint bombs after they attacked a labor protest in Athens, Greece. Protestors in Chile & other Latin American countries use the same defense & although paint bombs are no match for water cannons & tear gas at least it highlights the humiliation in neon. Here riot cops got it handed to them when they attacked protestors at International Workers’ Day/May Day in Bogota, Colombia. As amusing as the paint bombs are, what’s evident around the world is that the democratic right to public protest is being challenged with military force, including all manner of assaultive weapons. This is no laughing matter at all & is a call to arms for those who believe in democracy & that the right to oppose injustice is a human right, not a privilege. (Photo by Jose Miquel Gomez/Reuters)

Clashes again erupt when riot cops attack

Protests in support of Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike are ongoing outside Ofer military prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Here a Palestinian protester hurls stones at the Goliath of Israeli troops attempting to break up the protests by firing tear gas, rubber bullets, & a foul-smelling liquid called “skunk”. Once again, as the media reports it, “clashes erupted” when the Israeli troops tried to prevent protestors from exercising the democratic right of peaceful protest. Boycott all Israeli products (barcode 729) to defend the right of public protest. (Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)

Reviewing the scouts

This is a photo of Betty & Fullup Windsor reviewing the English Boy Scouts with their head scout master. The mockery this moment so richly deserves is upstaged completely by it’s curious nature. Philip J. Deloria, the son of Native American activist & writer, Vine Deloria, & a university professor, has written a marvelous book called, “Playing Indian”. He describes how Anglo settlers, despite racism & extermination campaigns, appropriated & ritualized Native American dress & customs. It is no accident, Deloria says, that rebels donned Indian outfits & headdresses before dumping British cargo at the Boston Tea Party; or that many secret & white supremacist societies re-configured Indian customs & attire for their rituals; or that open groups like the Boy Scouts promoted association with nature & incorporated Indian practices & skills but based on white supremacist folklore about Indian killers like Daniel Boone & Davy Crockett. So what  the hell are they doing in England!? Deloria’s analysis is more psychological than political: the ambiguities (even the creepiness) of this pretense are to quiet the inner turmoil generated by the conflict between the ideology of equality & the practice of white supremacism. And that suits England as well as it does the US. Of course, it could also be dressing up war games & militarism as character building adventures. (Photo by Ben Stansall)

More fun than a barrel of monkeys

In a fortuitous encounter with a zoo keeper, we once stood together looking at a gorilla in a cement indoor cage without sunlight, with phony trees & foliage & not a single thing from nature. As gorillas always do in zoos, he put his back to us. Where I saw bereavement & misery & said so to the stranger standing near me, she said, “Oh no, I’m the zoo keeper. I assure you he’s very happy. We see to his intellectual stimulation every Thursday by hiding his food & making him hunt for it.” Here the caption to this photo from Tokyo says, the “monkey named Junior performs in front of a boy during a street performance.” Does this sad little monkey look like he’s having a barrel of fun? Children very often are disturbed by the treatment of animals at zoos & circuses because they see what many adults do not--that animals are living & emotional creatures, not toys, not performers, not spectacles.  (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP)

May Day 2012: a time to commit to ending child labor

International Labor Day 2012 & this young boy, a migrant from India, works at a brick factory in Nepal as part of a seasonal work migration. Brick kilns emit toxic fumes & particulates causing serious health problems, including to eyes, lungs, & throat. These pollutants (including carbon monoxides) are known to stunt the mental & physical growth of children. Thousands of kilns are set up with no labor standards & no environmental controls at all when studies show the toxic fumes contaminate crops & plants adjacent to brick fields & cause deforestation since wood is used to fire the kilns. On this day to honor working people our commitment should be to find a way to end the abomination of child labor & return our little brothers & sisters to the schools & playgrounds where they belong.  (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)
http://www.wisdomblow.com/?p=2895

Plunder on steroids

The Appalachians in the eastern US are a 480-million year old mountain range running north to south from the southern states through Canada, with a 2,184 mile hiking trail famous among long-distance hikers. Regrettably, the Appalachians have become the range most associated with a strip mining method called mountain top removal (MTR) which blasts entire mountain tops off using explosives in order to extract embedded coal seams. Five-hundred mountain tops & over 1,200 miles of streams have been destroyed so far. It’s called “strip mining on steroids”; it’s really plunder on steroids. The scramble for minerals & fossil fuel resources is driving a staggering increase in land grabs & reckless prospecting across Latin America, Asia, Africa bankrolled by foreign capital & now with the development of shale oil & gas “fracking” (a process linked to earthquakes which involves high-pressure injection of toxic chemicals), under North America & Europe as well. In the past decade, iron ore extraction is up by 180%, cobalt by 165%, lithium by 125%, & coal by 44% (despite international agreements to reduce carbon emissions to reverse climate change). This out of control plunder threatens every living thing. Beside heating up the planet, mining companies & investors are turning ecosystems into wastelands of deforestation, contaminated topsoil & waterways, & causing flooding, mudslides, earthquakes, tornados. Farmers & indigenous communities have been dispossessed, food production systems destroyed, biodiversity & wildlife habitats mown down. Millions of workers, including child workers, use toxic chemicals like mercury in the extractive process or spend hours in cramped rat holes digging out profit & death. Numerous studies show catastrophic health consequences for those who reside near mining facilities, including respiratory & digestive disorders, organ failure, bone damage, cancers. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is just the tip of the ice berg but demonstrates for all to see what the media tries so hard to hide: the criminal irresponsibility & insanity of these companies. The oligarchs have proven their utter inability to steward this planet. Indigenous people have been in the forefront of the struggle against these mining operations around the world. Now, several environmental groups have called for a global moratorium on new, large-scale mining, extraction & prospecting. This photo is an MTR operation in the Appalachians, Wise County, Virginia, USA. Find a way to add your voice to opposing this human & environmental catastrophe. (Photo by Mario Tama)

International Roma Day celebrated with mass, forcible evictions

As Serbian politicians, from the Prime Minister to the Mayor of Belgrade, were marking International Roma Day (April 8th) with high-flown rhetoric about equality, the whole rotten shebang were organizing the forcible eviction of 250 Roma families (1,500 people) from their makeshift settlement of tin & wood huts in order to provide room for an access road to a new bridge over the River Sava. And the plot only sickens from there. Without collaborating with the families involved about their needs & the resettlement plans, the authorities arranged for some of the families to be deported to other parts of Serbia with no provision for housing (including a 17-year old pregnant woman on her own) or relocated to another suburb & housed in metal shipping containers unsuitable for human habitation. The plan entailed separating families with elderly, infirm, disabled (like the woman in a wheelchair sent to a different place than her caretaker daughter), moving people far from their work sites, segregating Roma in ghettos, making whole families homeless. Residents of Resnik, the suburb where the metal containers were set up, marked International Roma Day violently protesting against the relocation--disavowing racism but using repugnant nationalist rhetoric about cultural unity. If all this chicanery weren’t enough, the mayor of Belgrade threw cynicism into the brew by denouncing the nationalists as “racist”--but of course, disavowing his own. Amnesty International & Serbian human rights groups have been protesting Roma evictions which have gone on for years, are slated to continue, & have a strong ethnic cleansing character. The rights groups denounce forcible evictions for violating human rights & international law & have appealed to the European Commission & European Investment Bank (EIB) to stop the action since Serbia is a candidate for entry to the European Union & EIB is bankrolling the bridge. That’s like appealing to Beelzebub to stand up against evil. The human rights groups got promises for prefabricated housing & for complying with international law; the Roma got squat--because the EIB is not a social service agency; it’s an agency of neoliberal plunder that bankrolled the Sava bridge to facilitate export industries in Serbia. There are over fifty such EIB development projects in Central Europe alone as well as in Africa (Zambia & Uganda) where officials prioritize transport, mining, infrastructure projects over human needs like health & housing & the environment & which only benefit a small elite. All 250 families (some shown here) were evicted last Thursday. Media reports note Belgrade police did not use force but that’s only if you think lining up a phalanx of bull dozers is not threatening. You can protest Serbian treatment of Roma by contacting the Mayor of Belgrade: gradonacelnik@beogradsg.org.rs or natasa.golubovic@beogradsg.org.rs

(Reuters photo)

Kony 2012 is another name for war propaganda

‎{Reposting this from last month since media reports US special forces sent by Obama to Uganda are now joining 5,000 African Union troops in the hunt for Joseph Kony. It is the phony-assed hunt for Osama ben Laden that led to the now 11-year war in Afghanistan, making millions homeless, refugees, disabled, murdered.}


Kony 2012 is another name for boloney 101. It’s a war-mongering scam appealing to people’s compassion & social conscience but relying on widespread ignorance of Africa, it’s people, & it’s politics. The dead giveaway is the tone of the campaign: hysterical urgency. The film maker thought he would revive a moribund film career on the backs of the people of Uganda by combining war propaganda with cinematic devices of melodrama.

Anyone who grew up in the McCarthy era is well familiar with the hysterical method since we were taught communists used mind control & put fluoride in the water to corrupt the morals of youth--at the same time as we were asked to give pennies for the “poor pagan babies of Africa”. Media uses the hysterical voice selectively so as not to wear out its value. It’s primary purpose is to whip up war fever & convince thousands of kids to enlist in the military to take out an evil, monstrous tyrant--under the guise of making the world safe for democracy. (It first struck a discordant note with me when the US was drumming up support for Israel in the 1967 war. It was so overplayed that a political naif could recognize the manipulation & sought out the truth behind the hysteria.)

Media also used the hysterical voice against women’s liberation when they baited feminists as lesbians too ugly to get a man; they used it against Black power activists, portraying them as armed & violent thugs rather than freedom fighters & they continue to use it against Black youth, portraying them as violent gang members engaged in drug dealing--using hysteria to railroad them into prison. The hysterical voice--used to sell salacious gossip in tabloid journalism & to sell war, racism, & misogyny in respectable journalism--has been given a new lease on life through the rapid-fire nature of social networking.

The Kony 2012 campaign is not about Joseph Kony & the Lord’s Resistance Army. By reliable accounts, Kony is no longer even operative in Uganda. It’s about promoting US war designs in Africa under the banner of humanitarianism. It’s about the US-NATO war in Libya, US drones bombing in Somalia, & US Marines deployed in Uganda. In short, it’s about US military intervention & occupation in Africa. And it’s about competition for Africa’s abundant natural resources being played out in the entire region of east Africa between the US, China, European, & other countries.

Why haven’t the humanitarian war-mongers--the celebrities, athletes & billionaires the film maker appeals to--ever spoken out against US wars in Iraq & Afghanistan? Why haven’t they denounced US bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia? Why have we never heard Clooney, Jolie, DeGeneres, Oprah, & this schmo, Jason Russell ever speak out about the plight of millions of Iraqi & Afghani refugees? Why do their tender hearts & indignation only beat in sync with US militarism & the Pentagon? And if US & UN concerns are humanitarian, why haven’t they been able to get food to millions of starving people all over the entire region of east Africa? Because believe me, they will have no problem moving in entire armies, or erecting air strips & military bases. Kony 2012 & Invisible Children may be a commercial bonanza in hoodies & posters but it is nothing but a war-mongering scam appealing to the best in people in order to make a handful of people rich at the expense of the people of Uganda. US out of Africa. (Photo of children of Uganda by Sue O’Connor)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/23/african-union-force-step-hunt-kony/

Please sign this petition for animal welfare

Most zoos are hell holes of shackles, cramping, & concrete but the Surabaya Zoo in Surabaya, Indonesia is surely among the most wretched. For years, animal welfare activists from around Indonesia have been protesting the appalling & squalid conditions which cause hundreds of animal deaths every year. With over 4,000 animals, it has the most diverse & impressive menagerie found in Southeast Asia, including many critically endangered species: Sumatran tigers, camels, elephants, crocodiles, an array of birds, deer, bears, orangutans, Komodo dragons, an African lion, a wallaby. The emaciated, neglected animals live in dank, cramped, unsanitary, concrete cages, suffer from skin tumors & lesions, untreated wounds, diseases like pneumonia & tuberculosis, disabilities, lack of exercise. Many are on the brink of death. In 2010, after the death toll had risen to 25 animals per month & pressure from animal rights activists became clamorous, the Ministry of Forestry placed the zoo under an interim director to clean up the operation. The interim director blamed the problems on lack of money & an undisciplined staff but the conflict arose in 1998 with a prolonged management conflict between the Indonesian government, the Forestry Ministry, & the Surabaya municipality. Conditions then were so bad that the operation license was indefinitely (or at least until the heat was off) revoked. Last month, the scandalous conditions in the zoo became news again when a 30-year old male giraffe named Kliwon died with a 40-lb. (18 kg) wad of plastic in his stomach; for years, he had been eating whatever he could get which was mostly trash & peanuts thrown at him by zoo visitors. After Kliwon’s death & still blaming the staff, the warring & responsible agencies sent a new interim team in to clean up the mess. It’s certainly true that as the economic crisis deepens, zoos around the world face budget cuts & deficits. But one of the reasons many animals are endangered in the first place is the plunderous environmental policies of oligarchs who deforest natural habitats to build plantations to grow crops for the export market. Please take a moment to sign this petition from an animal welfare activist demanding the zoo be closed & animals be provided with suitable care & housing:
https://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-indonesia-close-surabaya-zoo (Photo of Kliwon taken the morning of his death by Juni Kriswanto/AFP)

When will we finally be done with feudalism?

For sheer sycophancy, you cannot beat this US media report on the first anniversary of WWWWilly & KKKKaty Windsor’s marriage. One expects the ignominious royal watchers of England to drool like this; they’re either unfortunate souls bred to servility or the illegitimate offspring of moochocrats. But in the US, we’re taught the great French Revolution of “liberty, fraternity, equality” as our heritage. Our national folklore is full of funny looking guys with puffed out chests who stood up to George III (the feudal guys didn’t have last names then since they all had the same parents). Is that all just  malarkey? Are we going to have to learn to scrape & bow again or is there another round in the American Revolution to give feudalism the final heave-ho? Here WWWWilly & KKKKaty hide their tiaras under cowboy hats in one of those saccharine photo ops that have come to distinguish their brief tenure. (Photo by Samir Hussein)

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/47148039/ns/today-today_people/#.T50SynjN7zI

Marquis de Strauss-Kahn

Marquis de Strauss-Kahn is wailing up a storm that Psychozy & French intelligence set him up so he couldn’t run for president. Well cry me a river! If the French Socialist Party weren’t already marinated in political bankruptcy, then running the head of the IMF for president would surely pickle it good. Here’s an amoral misogynist who administers globalization programs destroying lives & impoverishing millions but the SP considers him a suitable candidate rather than a felon! DSK probably got this foolish alibi from the libertarian think tank, Global Research, who’ve been lamenting for months that DSK was set up. And we’re supposed to care, why? It’s really more cause for jubilation that a putrid minion of the oligarchs has been brought down to size (we can’t say exposed since that's his customary state). (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP)

Separated at birth

There are those who consider comparisons between Monsieurs Psychozy & Pepe Le Pew undignified. Monsieur Le Pew could not agree more. In fact, he denounces the comparison as “merde” & threatens retribution against all who make this odiferous claim. Well judge for yourself. There’s no denying M. Le Pew has charms bereft in the other. Still, while M. Le Pew thinks a woman adores him even when she physically assaults him, M. Psychozy thinks citizens respect him when they vote for him. And around both, holding ones nose is de rigueur.

Smoke breaks out at protest

Media coverage of the Palestinian movement is distinguished by malignancy & racism but mostly by deceit. The caption to this photo says this Palestinian protestor “covers her face as smoke rises behind her during clashes”. That’s like “violence breaking out” when riot cops attack protestors. This student & other protestors are being tear gassed by Israeli soldiers while protesting in support of Palestinian political prisoners engaged in a hunger strike at Ofer prison in the West Bank. Ofer prison is an Israeli military prison built after the first Intifada to house Palestinians & is notorious for imprisoning children & other human rights abuses. The combination of Che Guevara & Intifada is certainly propitious. Boycott all Israeli products (barcode 729) to add your voice to this cause. (Photo by Abbas Momani/AFP)

Justice denied by US deals

The US media has a policy called, “If we don’t report it, it didn’t happen”, which is why they ignore titanic political, environmental, human developments around the world & talk about rescued kitties & Kardashians. Here protestors in Sana’a, Yemen--some of whom have been occupying a city square for over a year--continue to demand the prosecution of former president & dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh & his close aides for the murder & incarceration of thousands of protestors. The media policy isn’t burying it’s head in the sand but is covering asses for the US-brokered deal giving sanctuary to Saleh & keeping his old regime intact. (Photo by Yahya Arhab/EPA)

Homeless in Manila

Homeless in Manila, Philippines: hands down, the crowning achievement of modern capitalism has got to be the 100 million homeless children across this planet, with an estimated 2 million in the Philippines. Nothing confirms pieties about children being the future more powerfully than the utter depravity of the neglect, exploitation  & violence they face. They get by as beggars, pickpockets, drug abusers, prostitutes; they deal with hunger, parasites, ill-health, & fear of arrest under vagrancy laws, often resulting in physical & sexual abuse; in some places like the Philippines, they are victims of vigilante death squads, thought to be government sanctioned, who consider them vermin to be exterminated. Here Filipino children sleep near a highway in Manila. Imagine their bereavement & terror. Then consider that the Philippines has four billionaires, including Henry Sy, the real estate magnate behind the forcible evictions in Manila making thousands homeless so he can build shopping malls.   (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency)

No to US military presence

GABRIELA is a Filipino women’s coalition of 250 groups that actively advocates women’s issues including human rights, militarism, poverty, globalization, health, sex trafficking, violence. The group, formed in 1984, is named in honor of Gabriela Silang, who led a revolt against Spain in the second half of the 18th century. Here they tangle with cops trying to block them from barging the gates of the US Embassy in Manila. They were protesting the presence of 4,500 US troops in recently concluded joint military exercises with Filipino troops. This was the 28th iteration of these bilateral exercises which take place all over the Philippines but the first time participants from other countries took part. You make our hearts sing, GABRIELA!  (Photo by Dennis M. Sabangan/EPA)

Afghan child

An Afghan girl with her sheep, outside the city of Herat.
(Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry about Herat is worth reading & shows what a rich culture Afghanistan has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herat) {Photo by Aref Karimi/AFP}

Housing is a human right

Here riot police turn a water cannon on housing protestors during the demolition of their shanty homes at a location in a south suburb of Manila--most likely Quezon City where residents in the on-going evictions are usually given only a few days to relocate. The battles in Quezon go back years with appeals by residents to the Commission on Human Rights, to the Manila Development Authority (which would send demolition squads), & attempts to the get the Quezon city council to declare moratoriums on evictions until there are enough relocation sites--mind you, not public housing provided to evictees, but empty lots where they can move. Quezon City was identified as the richest city in the Philippines (in 2008) & has embarked on a massive infrastructure program including business parks, IT & call centers, malls, & other projects designed to attract investment. Poor people stand in the way & must be bull dozed out with no place to go. Housing is a human right regardless of the ability to pay.  (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP)

Money for housing, not for war!

The Philippines & Brazil are not the only countries facing urbanization into slums & shanty towns by rural people displaced in predatory land-grabs & by IMF economic policies. But they are surely among the countries where people have mounted the most fierce resistance when they are also forcibly removed from those urban slums so cities & landlords can build joint venture high-priced condos & shopping malls. Without provision for public housing to relocate, residents have fought legal battles against evictions along with street protests against demolition bull dozers & police brutality, including the use of water cannons & other assaultive weapons. On Monday, at the Silverio Compound in Parañaque City (part of metropolitan Manila), one resident was killed & 36 were injured by riot police. Here residents confront cops protecting the demolition squad sent to evict them. More evictions are slated soon in Quezon City (another part of Manila). Most of these housing battles are not won by the residents--either in the courts or on the street & extreme violence is used against them. What they make clear beyond a shadow of a doubt is that massive homelessness is caused by economic predation, that housing is a primary human need denied millions of human beings in every country, & that it must become a primary demand in all political agitation. Money for housing, not for war! (Photo by ABS-CBNnews)

Testimony to the power of one

During the 1967 Israeli War with Egypt, Jordan, & Syria, the media used hysterical rhetoric to drum up support for Israel & while I did not understand the issues in the war, I damn well understood the media manipulation. Walking across the University of Minnesota campus, I saw a lone protestor with a placard supporting the Arab combatants & I approached him to ask why he was protesting. He must have been very frightened in the political atmosphere of that time & brusquely answered me, “They stole our land.” I asked him what he meant but he only repeated, “They stole our land.” It only confirmed to me there was more to the story of the war than the media hysteria & I went in search of that story--becoming soon enough involved in Palestinian support work. The antiwar movement where I now live is inactive & with that lone Palestinian protestor in mind, I often go out alone with placard in hand to protest the wars. Here Karen Steele (of Westminster, MD) protests in inclement weather outside the Fort Meade military base in support of Bradley Manning, the soldier & whistleblower who exposed US war crimes in Iraq & Afghanistan. A judge is expected to rule soon on a defense motion to dismiss all 22 charges against him. For those who eschew public protest by claiming there is no antiwar movement, I post Ms. Steele’s testimony to the contrary & to the power of one when there is no option. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla)