It’s not certain how Obama weasels out of condemnation for the same human rights crimes Netanyahu commits by unlawful detainment of prisoners & force-feeding prisoners who protest this by hunger strikes.

We just went through weeks of crisis over the health of Palestinian hunger striker Mohammad Allan in the Israeli gulag. Israel has its gulag; the US has Guantanamo & numerous secret torture centers, including in Afghanistan.

Tariq Ba Odah is a 36-year-old Yemeni man & Saudi resident picked up in 2001 in Pakistan by local police, turned over to the US military, & transferred to Guantanamo in 2002 for no apparent crime. He has served all that time, subjected to torture, without charge by the US government. In 2007 he initiated a hunger strike to protest indefinite detention for having done nothing & in 2009 was cleared for release by the Obama regime.

This young girl is an Afghan refugee (wrapped in a plastic sheet) after being rescued off the cost of Lesbos, Greece on Friday. Before SYRIZA temporarily loosened restrictions on refugees & immigrants, thousands were stuck in squalid filthy prisons, subject to right-wing vigilante attacks, homeless, unable to move on to other European countries because Greece functioned as the front line of Frontex & denied them papers.

There were many reports about thousands of Afghan youth trying to cross the barrier wall Greece had built on the Turkish border. They had worked their way from war & unemployment in Afghanistan to homelessness & incarceration in Greece. Some did make it through the Frontex barriers to homelessness in Germany & elsewhere.

Some of the same cosmetic companies (like Estee Lauder, Revlon, & Lancome) on the boycott of Israel list are among those who still test on animals. Why is that not a surprise!?

The actor, Joe Mantegna, is holding a gun auction to benefit the Israeli military. Of course it’s one of the most powerful military apparatuses in the world thanks to the largesse of the US Pentagon & doesn’t need this kind of charity. It’s likely just to engage celebrities in public displays of obeisance to Israel & the mythology of Exodus surrounding its origin.

It would be good if supporters of BDS took a look at his Facebook wall (where it appears the only thing he loves more than Israel is himself) & leave comments objecting to his auction. To be spiteful, you could leave the comment under the photo of him & Gary Sinise, the right-wing actor who never met a war or other repugnance he didn’t just love.

American television has become so disturbed & obsessed with the macabre, the sadistic, & psychopathic that it’s impossible to watch. I love whodunnit detective stories but the crimes portrayed are now grotesque & graphically portrayed. There really wasn’t room for a Hannibal Lecter knock-off but they made a series anyway. The rest are all glorifications of militarism, the CIA & FBI, & are up to their eyeballs in Islamophobia & evil terrorists with Arab names.

I may have to stop eating for three weeks to afford cable just so there’s something to watch at night. And please don’t tell me to dump the TV. Some of us actually like watching. Without apologies.

No I will not sign the get-well card for Jimmy Carter so stop messaging it to me. I’m truly sorry he has cancer & glad he’s taking the news with equanimity & good grace. But I refuse to participate in the beatification rituals.

He has a political accounting to make–not just to the American people–but to those in several countries who suffered from his policies while president. Those policies do not a halo make. There were crimes against humanity involved, including in El Salvador, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Iran, Palestine, Egypt.

I wish no one evil (with the exception of Kissinger) but I expect no less decency from Carter than I do from ordinary activists.

Autopsy results on Mansur Ball-Bey–the 18-year-old shot dead by police last Wednesday in Ferguson, Missouri–contradict the version of events told by police. Police authorities claimed he pointed a gun at them as he fled a home they were serving with a search warrant. They say he dropped his weapon & took off running after officers fired four shots at him–one of those shots fatal.

The autopsy by the chief medical examiner shows Ball-Bey died from a single bullet shot in the back which hit his heart & would have killed him instantly, making it impossible for him to keep running.
There’s no way Police Chief Sam Dotson can finesse this crime but that didn’t stop him from trying. He said the location of the fatal shot doesn’t prove or disprove the police narrative–“Just because he was shot in the back doesn’t mean he was running away.” We’ll let that idiocy stand without comment.

According to the young man’s family–who don’t believe the police account–he wasn’t a troublemaker or delinquent. He had gone over to a relative’s house after his regular job at FedEx & was still wearing his work uniform. He graduated in June from high school, worked part-time, was active in the Moorish Temple, & was planning on going to college this fall.

Our deepest condolences to the family. May he Rest in Peace.

(Photo is Mansur Ball-Bey provided by family)

Frontex at the Greek-Macedonia border: Frontex is the thug squad of European Union immigration policy–the same thug squad allowing thousands of immigrants to drown in the Mediterranean Sea.

Macedonian police are blocking refugees trying to cross what the Guardian-UK calls “an illegal crossing point on the border.” Another case of the devil being in the details. As part of a joint operation agreement with the EU & Frontex, Macedonian riot police & military are throwing up razor-wire fencing & using tear gas & grenades against unarmed refugees. The entire border is now an “illegal crossing point.”

This photo speaks for itself & condemns EU immigration policy for the barbarism it is. Imagine that Frontex at the behest of European politicians allows human beings to drown & denies sanctuary to thousands fleeing war & bombing! That’s the barbarism of neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

Immigration is a human right. Sanctuary for refugees is a human right. Open the damn borders.

(Photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA)

According to police authorities, on Wednesday morning Ferguson, Missouri police executed a search warrant on a house for what appears to be a routine drug bust. They claim two armed young men took off out the back door & when police in the alley ordered them to drop their guns, one of them opened fire. Police shot one “suspect” dead & the other took off. Eighteen-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey was shot four times. Since the other “suspect” is a witness to what actually happened, he better keep running.

Since Missouri has an open carry law which they proclaim “inalienable” & since they allow the Oath Keepers, a white vigilante group from outside Ferguson, to patrol the Black community with AK-47s, it would be necessary for them to explain why they ordered the two young men to drop their guns. If you can carry an open weapon in a coffee shop, why not your own back yard?

There have of course been protests in the Black community against the shooting of Ball-Bey. To justify the shooting, police claim they found four more guns & crack cocaine in the house. Once again, Missouri is an open carry state so those guns are not illegal. To cover their asses, police claimed the guns were stolen. Yeah sure. And since when is summary execution a legal way of addressing drug possession?

Media reports that ‘some protesters express doubt over the police account of Ball-Bey pointing a gun’. All of them do or they wouldn’t be out there protesting while police are moving in armored vehicles, & responding with tear gas & grenades.

Media also reports ‘the city has been on edge’ since a white police officer shot & killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014. The Black community is “on edge” because their civil liberties are being massively & systematically denied–& that was confirmed in a report by the US Department of Justice.

These protesters were out last night chanting during a march surrounded by riot cops. Our fullest solidarity with them because ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬. And because the Bill of Rights in the Black community matters.

(Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

And so the EU/Frontex crackdown on refugees coming through Greece has begun full-force–not only with aggression against refugees on the island of Kos but now on the Macedonian border with Greece. Macedonia is not an EU member state but the EU has joint operation agreements with non-member states involving Europol & Frontex to police the borders.

Macedonian authorities declared a state of emergency & deployed riot police & the army in armored vehicles rolling out razor-wire fencing to seal the border with Greece. Witnesses reported they used tear gas & stun grenades to drive refugees, including small children & elderly, back into Greece. According to some refugees in the border assault, families got split up with some being driven back into Greece & others managing to break the military cordon & enter Macedonia.

Those refugees who make it through Macedonia pass through Serbia & still face the razor-wire fence on the Serbia-Hungary border which Hungary is racing to construct. Since most of the refugees move quickly through Macedonia to get further north into Europe, they are not a social service burden on the regime–though fortuitously the crisis does deflect attention from the political crisis facing the Macedonian regime over allegations of corruption, illegal surveillance & repression.The primary reason for the crackdown is not however the regime crisis but EU policies & the EU joint operation agreement with Macedonia.

We’re glad to hear UN refugee agencies find the situation deplorable but wish they would move beyond their usual hand-wringing to condemnations of the EU & Frontex & demand Macedonia remove its troops & re-open the border. One UN official said Greece estimated between 3,000 & 4,000 refugees are stuck in a no-man’s land at the border without access to medical & humanitarian services. That will only increase as the crackdown continues & there is a major human rights crisis to deal with. Human rights crises exist on every major immigration route in the world only because political regimes deny human beings the ancient right of asylum from war, occupation, poverty.

This photo is one incident today of a refugee & his frightened child running from riot police firing stun grenades to disperse them. The barbarism against them will only increase without worldwide expressions of outrage.

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)