Filipino activists are a constant inspiration & model of toughness; we’ve seen them grab water cannons from riot police & turn them on the cops. Over & over, we’ve seen them do pitched battle with riot police & bulldozers sent to forcibly evict them from slums. There isn’t a US politician who arrives in Manila without antiwar protesters out demanding ‘US military out of the Philippines’. Here they’re taking sticks after riot cops trying to stop them from marching to the congress in Quezon City (a section of metro Manila) where president Benigno Aquino is delivering his state of the nation address. Their placard is translated as “Increase the salary of workers, lower down the prices of goods.”

The Guardian-UK caption to this beautiful photo is a classic–another case of media not always outright lying but never telling the truth about Palestinians & Israel:

“Four-year-old Haifa Al Atawna looks out from the window of her family’s destroyed house after nightfall during a power outage in Al Shejaeiya neighbourhood. Residents of Gaza, home to 1.8 million people, have been experiencing up to 18 hours of electricity outage a day for the past two weeks due to fuel & power shortages.”

This is another one of those encounters media is calling a “scuffle” with Palestinian women at Al-Aqsa Mosque yesterday. Can you imagine how it would be reported if over a dozen Palestinian men were assaulting an Israeli woman!? But since Israeli soldiers don’t hesitate to assault Palestinian children, why should they make an exception for women?

Israeli police reports on the conflict at Al-Aqsa said masked Palestinian “rioters” stockpiled explosives & weapons in the mosque to use against Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall. How were they going to get them from the mosque to the Wailing Wall plaza? In fact, how did they stockpile those weapons & how were they going to get at them to use against “worshippers” since men under 50 aren’t allowed inside the mosque? And why do they show photos of women without masks being assaulted by border police but no masked “rioters”?

It’s one thing for the Israeli government to pass this baloney off as fact but it’s quite another that media would report it like the gospel truth when it’s so transparently foolish.

It has to be said that when the Israeli military condones & encourages this kind of human rights misconduct, they are opening up Israeli civilian society to all sorts of problems when soldiers are demobilized. Mental health issues & social dysfunction involving violence become routine. You don’t transition from this kind of violence to being model citizens content with parenting & gardening. That’s the price paid for militarism evident in crime statistics associated with veterans certainly in the US & likely all over the world.

Build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel & demand “No military aid to Israel.”

(Photo by Mahmoud Illean/AP)

It’s one thing that Caetano Veloso & Gilberto Gil defied the Palestinian call to honor the cultural boycott of Israel by performing there. They proved themselves lowlife jesters for apartheid & disgraced themselves by posing with Shimon Peres, the former president & terrorist.

It’s another thing entirely they try to play Palestinians & the BDS movement for fools by visiting Susiya in the West Bank & making statements about how “Israeli militarism should be used as a defense, never as a means of attack & oppression of the Palestinian people.” Who the hell do they think they’re kidding!? The only thing missing was a touching moment of prayer at the apartheid wall. Note they did not go to Gaza.

Once you breach the cordon sanitaire around apartheid, it’s all over but the shame.

(Photo is the two jesters with the terrorist)

You gotta love how activists do things in the Philippines. Here they’re burning an effigy of president Benigno Aquino III after riot cops blocked them from marching to the parliament where he was giving a state of the nation address to the congress–likely recycled from the speeches he’s been giving everywhere about the economic miracle his policies have wrought.

Activists have plenty to protest since under Aquino the Philippines have become a showcase of neoliberal scorched earth economics. Thousands of farmers are being expropriated for agribusiness plantations; thousands of slum residents are being burned out & forcibly evicted from newly-privatized public lands to make way for resorts, casinos, shopping malls; the country is being re-militarized to serve US competition with China in the South China Sea region.

Our deepest respect & fullest solidarity with Filipino activists; we only regret the US antiwar movement is presently too weak to support your work. We are committed to change that.

(Photo by Ezra Acayan/Reuters)

I’m working on a series of posts about the struggle in Kashmir against the brutal Indian military occupation. It is not an exaggeration to say there has long been a news blackout on one of the most important struggles in the world today. Important if for no other reason than India & Pakistan contesting Kashmir in repeated wars are both nuclear powers. But from the point of view of justice, important because Kashmiris are being hammered by human rights crimes & violence at the hands of the Indian military–& this is being hidden from the world.

There were no books in the excellent local library about Kashmir (except tangentially in books on India & the 1947 Partition) & only about 15 in the University of Texas library which has umpteen thousands of books. Another resource is the hundreds of articles written for academic journals.

What is striking about the books & most of the articles, many written by government analysts, is their inability to present a coherent narrative. One can excuse lousy writing; that’s pro forma media-speak. But what’s most remarkable is that so few write from the point of view of what is called the Kashmir Intifada, of Kashmiri resistance to the occupation, about what the occupied feel & think & endure. It’s all analyses of power politics & maneuvering between the competing regimes, including US meddling–as if Kashmiris don’t count & shouldn’t have a voice.

That’s why alternative journalism is so vital–to allow people to speak for themselves, to tell the truth about what is happening, not within the framework of phony agreements & power politics but according to the demands of justice & those demanding it.

There are many photos of Israeli police attacking Palestinian women yesterday at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Media has chosen to call them “scuffles” when the photos clearly depict assaults. The Israeli account of what happened is garbled–in the way all fictitious song-&-dance stories are–but the incident yesterday was a replay of many other provocations by right-wing Zionist thugs protected by Israeli cops who try to reclaim the site of the mosque as sacred to Judaism. That’s why it’s not believable. Even the logistics don’t add up.

Israel claims masked Palestinian “rioters” stockpiled explosives, Molotov cocktails, & other weapons inside the mosque to attack thousands of “Jewish worshippers gathered for prayers at the Western Wall for Tisha B’Av, a day of mourning that commemorates the destruction of the first & second Jewish Temples.” Reports conflict on where the worshipper/thugs were–at the Western Wall or inside the mosque compound. The Western Wall is a section of the enclosure around the Al-Aqsa compound known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims & the Temple Mount to Zionists & is located in East Jerusalem under illegal occupation by Israel since 1967.

The Noble Sanctuary is 35 acres of fountains, gardens, museums, as well as the Al-Aqsa Mosque & the Dome of the Rock (which has sacred meaning to Muslims). The entire area is regarded as sacred space & is an educational center as well as religious sanctuary. It’s existed in various reconstructions for over 1,300 years. The fallacious media mantra is that the Noble Sanctuary is the holiest site for Judaism but only the third holiest site to Islam. The reason offered for why it’s sacred to Judaism is that it’s the original site of Solomon’s Temple said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant & destroyed in 586 BCE (for which there isn’t a shred of archaeological evidence). There was an actual temple on the site between 516 BCE & 70 CE when the Romans destroyed it. It was renovated by Herod (of Biblical notoriety) & the supposed remnants of the Herodian wall make up the Western Wall (known also as the Wailing Wall) heralded by Israel as the most sacred place of Judaism.

Millions of people make pilgrimage & fetishistic homage to the old stone wall, the altar of the Israeli state. One would never ridicule even the most absurd religious practice but there is no need to feign respect for a narrative fabricated solely to serve Zionist nationalism & not religious commitment. It’s not inconceivable that there’s a mystique around that pile of stones. But a mystique is not the same as a religious tradition or historic claim.

Far from being an ancient tradition, there is little evidence that Jews, most of whom lived outside Palestine until the late 19th century, held the wall as sacred. Jewish immigration to Palestine was part of the great wave of emigration from Eastern Europe during that time–some driven by economic desperation, some to escape pogroms & persecution, & many as evangelists of Zionism goaded by Zionist organizations as advance guard for setting up a Jewish-only state. And that’s when trouble began in Palestine around Islam’s holy sites, with Zionists creating historic narratives & fabricating religious traditions that did not exist.

In 1948 when Israel was founded on the violent expulsion of Palestinians with the collusion of colonial regimes (especially the UK), East Jerusalem came under the jurisdiction of Jordan through negotiations with the UN; West Jerusalem was under Israeli control. The Noble Sanctuary is in East Jerusalem. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied East Jerusalem & within a matter of three days had flattened the Palestinian neighborhood (called the Moroccan Quarter) adjacent to the Western Wall & Noble Sanctuary & forcibly cleared out the residents. Their property was expropriated for public use & eventually turned into a plaza to receive thousands of born-again Zionists laying claim to a land that wasn’t theirs. That “ancient tradition” of placing messages in the Western Wall doesn’t go back to Herod but began with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan when they marched into East Jerusalem & he inserted a written prayer into the cracks of the wall.

After the 1967 war, Zionists under the leadership of right-wing Rabbi Shlomo Goren (chief rabbi of the Israeli military & later chief rabbi of Israel) began claiming the Noble Sanctuary for building a third temple. Non-Muslims were forbidden to pray within the compound & so the Western Wall served for a long while as an outdoor & surrogate temple but Zionists have always had their eye on the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque & erecting their temple there. Palestinians frequently claim Israeli excavations under Al-Aqsa are threatening the foundations making it liable to collapse. Israeli rabbis are divided on Jews praying within the compound. Traditional rabbinical scholars regard it as antithetical to Judaism. Right-wing Zionist rabbis are much more flexible with religious principles in service to their rabid nationalism.

This explains the constant harassment & storm trooper tactics by Zionist extremists, police agents, & Israeli troops within the Al-Aqsa compound. This also explains why there is relentless political pressure to reverse the prohibition on non-Muslims worshipping there & why Palestinian males under 50 are barred access to the mosque & must pray in the public streets. In November, Israel ordered the mosque closed down after the shooting of an ultranationalist Zionist who campaigned aggressively for Jewish prayer rights at the site. The entire purpose is to usurp & deny Palestinian religious rights & traditions.

Support Palestinian justice by boycotting all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729); by supporting the cultural boycott of Israel; by demanding “No US aid to Israel!”

(Photo by Mahmoud Illean/AP)

(This post is a slightly edited version of one I posted in December 2014; I’m reposting to clarify why there are constant Israeli attacks & ongoing conflict around the Al-Aqsa mosque.)

Other activists in the US (& around the world) will appreciate this message I received from a friend in Djibouti:

“when we read & follow other activists talking about crises & problems we love the us & american people but when we watch the speech of the president of america or other administration we hate the us government because we know they are lying & not honest.”– Sahal Ali

If it weren’t for social media, we would never have known each other existed. Solidarity in resistance to injustice makes the planet a much more hospitable place.

Who was it made us believe aging was ugly & infirm? Not in societies where they’re still valued nor where they defy the myths & value themselves. This woman has the eyes, & likely the spirit, of youth.

(Photo is Kalash woman from Pakistan)

These are immigrants in Macedonia on a train en route to Serbia. It has to be an absolutely wrenching experience to travel hundreds of miles through uncertain territory, eluding border patrols & criminal gangs, while trying to protect small children–not just from dangers but from illness & disease. The worst was Rohingya parents stranded on boats drifting for weeks with no food or water. Of course most are fleeing war & genocide. That doesn’t even address the women traveling alone with kids or the children traveling unaccompanied.

Children are the faces of immigration. They are the faces of war & of genocide. Not an inch can be conceded to regimes & right-wing xenophobes & racists who want the borders sealed. The false distinctions between immigrants & refugees can no longer be respected in any way at all.

The forces for human & immigrant rights have huge battles on our hands in every country. While thousands cross borders in desperation, regimes & politicians play with immigration rights to serve their own ends. In the US, the Obama regime held out hopes for amnesty–long enough to get the addresses of the undocumented. Then in a foxy political move, had a court withdraw the possibility, so now immigration officials know just where to pick them up, along with their undocumented parents. Jeb Bush & Hillary Clinton are promising the moon again for the undocumented so they can garner the Latino vote for the election.

Immigration rights will not be won through trust in politicians. That’s a fool’s game. They will only be won by working people carrying a banner emblazoned with “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Such an international movement would transform the ground we stand on & shake the very foundations of racism & social hatred.
Immigration is a human right! Open the borders!

(Photo by Boris Grdanoski/AP)