Al-Aqsa mosque in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem remains under siege by Israeli troops. Last week, during the celebration of Eid al-Adha, a Muslim high holy day, Israel continued to ban males under the age of 50 from worshipping in the mosque. This photo is those denied entrance worshipping in the plaza surrounding the mosque.

Using violence to deny people the expression of their most heartfelt religious commitments, especially during the holiest days of the year, is a monstrous violation of human rights & religious freedom.

Haaretz reported there were clashes again today between Israeli soldiers & police against Palestinians defending the mosque with stones, paint bombs, “fire bombs & fireworks.” They also claim Palestinian youth barricaded themselves in the mosque. It’s remarkable courage on the part of the youth since Israel recently instituted a 4-year minimum sentence for stone-throwing. Zionist settlers can torch Palestinian homes & mosques, poison water wells, & assault Palestinians with impunity but a rock will get a Palestinian kid 4 years in the gulag. There wouldn’t have been any problems at all at the Noble Sanctuary if Israel weren’t provoking it by sending troops to a place of worship & turning it into a war zone.

The Jerusalem police department issued a statement saying “The police have been making intensive efforts over the period of the High Holidays to enable worshippers of all religions to express their faith & celebrate their festivals in peace & security.” In fact, the police should get the hell out of there & let Palestinians deal with worshippers of other religions–like extremist Zionists–who try to violate the agreement with the Jordanian trust (which governs the Noble Sanctuary) expressly forbidding practitioners of other religions from worshipping there because it is a sacred site in Islam.

Apparently in a snit over Israel’s occupation of the compound, Jordan’s king Abdullah is refusing Netanyahu’s phone calls over the unrest. There’s nothing like a hissy fit to bring an occupying army to its knees. What Abdullah should be doing is to make an international scandal about what Israel is doing–not just to embarrass the UN, US, & UE for allowing the violent usurpation of religious freedom & human rights but to pressure them to oppose it. But no–Abdullah’s just not letting the butler answer his phone.

Palestinians are protesting in defense of the mosque because Israel’s intention is to take over & destroy the mosque & build a synagogue as part of manufacturing a historical & religious tradition for an invented people. Netanyahu, whose re-election has emboldened his criminality & insipidity, said “We are not the ones to change the status quo. Those who take pipe bombs to mosques are the ones changing the status quo.” Can you believe the temerity & idiocy of claiming Palestinians are trying to destroy the sacred grounds they are in fact defending!?

Building the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel is urgent–along with demanding no aid of any kind to apartheid Israel.

(Photo from AP)

If my criticisms of Pope Francis offend, I’m sorry for that but I’ve been a relentless critic of his since his 2014 trip to Israel–& in particular about his silence on the carpet bombing of Gaza. For me, that Hail Mary at the apartheid wall didn’t cut it. Nor does his call for a bantustate for Palestinians compensate for his refusal to condemn Israel.

I would hardly call myself a friend of the Vatican but I am not anti-Catholic. It’s the religious tradition that shaped me & that most of my family is committed to.

We should not let the day pass without taking a moment to honor the 43 Ayotzinapa student teachers who were kidnapped by the Mexican army September 26th last year. The Mexican government continues to try closing the case to cover for its active role in their abduction but parents & activists across Mexico brave the political climate of repression, including such disappearances, to keep the case alive through repeated protests & through continuing searches for mass graves.

They have not found the students but have found dozens of others buried, many of them likely immigrants traveling through Mexico from Central American to the US border who are subject to gang & paramilitary violence–& often disappeared.

“A comment on a Facebook thread that the Pope is a “poor moral guide” because of his fucked-up gender politics really clarified something for me: people look at politics through moral eyes, not practical ones. He’s a useful ally on some very important issues, like poverty/inequality, the deadening hand of capital, and the climate crisis. He’s not some blessed beacon who should serve as a model for living or a sanctified dispenser of virtue. Politics… is not a form of ethics.”
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Just one last word on Pope Francis’ visit to the US-unless tomorrow he comes out against birth control & abortion; then I’ll bury him in indignation. In contrast to protestantism, Catholicism retains a medieval, hierarchical structure. The pope is very much like a feudal monarch & speaks ex cathedra, which is very much a vestige of absolutism jettisoned in the Protestant Reformation.

However, the papacy operates in the era of capitalism which introduced popular democracy (albeit stunted & selective democracy) when it overthrew feudalism.

The caption to this AP photo said: “A South Korean protester surrounded by police sits on steps during a rally against the Government’s labor policy.” When a single protester is surrounded by riot cops as far as the eye can see, wouldn’t you think an elaboration would be required? Like why is he casually reading the sports page when they’re breathing down his neck with truncheons in hand?

If you look in the background of the photo, you can see there are other protesters at this rally in Seoul. In fact, for the past six months tens of thousands of union workers across South Korea have protested against government attacks on labor rights by modifying laws cutting pensions & to make it easier to fire people. Protesters are also demanding an increase in the minimum hourly wage from 5,580 won (US $5.18) to 10,000 won ($9.10).

This is our man John Boehner (pronounced Bonehead) who just resigned as Speaker of the US House of Representatives. No one has ever been able to explain the function of the House of Representatives except to make itself a complete nuisance of itself to citizens of the republic. It’s considered more plebeian than the Senate & be assured, not because the latter has more patrician social habits.

Speaker of the House is second to the vice president in case of death or impeachment of the president. The thought that Boehner would lead the US is no scarier than Biden as president–or for that matter, Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, the Bushes, Obama.

These Nubian men & boys, delightfully celebrating Eid al Adha with a selfie, live in the Nuba region, Aswan in southern Egypt. Who are the Nubians? The teaching of world history in US high schools & universities is a travesty of colonialism & racism. As an avid student of history, I rejected the elitist good king/bad king scenario explaining political events & change & always wanted to know what ordinary people were doing. But when I decided to stop studying history backwards & start at the “beginning,” I accepted the Eurocentric view that history began with the Greeks. (Forgive my ignorance; that was over 40 years ago.)

It was often through art museums I learned there was an entire historical universe not centered in Europe but in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, & that the best heritage of Greek achievement often came from those places or from interaction with those cultures. Even the Islamic Empire is excluded from US education. But not from museums.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) is a magnificent place with immense, spectacular galleries of Egyptian art which they renovated about 20 years ago to make even more imposing. The renovations were part of expanding the museum to nearly twice the size & included shifting the main entrance elsewhere. To avoid long lines I would enter by the old main door & did so for years without noticing an unlit gallery just off the foyer. Accidentally I noticed it was actually a gallery & decided to explore. An Irish woman tourist & an American Black male student were also there & we explored the gallery together.

It was a gallery of Nubian art, indistinguishable from Egyptian art except that the people depicted were clearly of African ancestry. The three of us were aghast at the disrespectful treatment of Nubian art & could not believe it was not incorporated into the renovated Egyptian galleries or at least adjacent to them where it belonged. And we talked about how our education about Africa & Egypt was a mockery of reality.

It should be noted that the MFA was just as disrespectful of American Black art, displaying it in a busy hallway next to fire extinguishers & behind potted plants. After repeated objections by patrons, including myself, the art was moved to a suitable gallery.

Scholarship has corrected much of the Eurocentrism warping historic education but this is not yet common pedagogy in US schools–nor I suspect in European, Canadian, or Australian schools. US schools still don’t teach the history of Native Americans & the colonial conquest nor a non-supremacist history of American slavery, Black Reconstruction, or Jim Crow.

This historical warp has everything to do with the ability of the US government to conduct wars without massive opposition because it portrays itself as a liberating force for primitive cultures.

Not every one can afford college; that’s what libraries, art museums, & now the internet are for. Correcting the historical warp is part of building solidarity by showing the profound connections human beings have across the globe in history & in every intellectual field of endeavor.

(Photo by Belal Darder/AP)

Pope Francis spoke at great length to the Congress; he spoke so long & said so little it must have seemed like an eternity, so chock-full it was of cliches & sentimentalities–the kind of speech we’re accustomed to from politicians.

He said he wants to dialogue with seniors because we are a “storehouse of wisdom forged by experience.” He’s got that straight. So let’s dialogue, Pope!

There was little to disagree with in his homily & the US Congress, that bastion of war appropriations, broke often into enthusiastic applause–especially vigorous applause when he called for compassion for immigrants.

Was anyone else disturbed, if not also mystified, that yesterday Pope Francis canonized Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan monk who helped colonize California by brutal suppression of Native Americans? Since Native Americans have publicly campaigned against the canonization, the Pope was certainly aware of the controversy.

And not to engage in small-minded carping, but as an antiwar activist it appalls that he would refer to the US as the “land of the free & home of the brave.” Not for Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Yemen, et al, it ain’t. Of course, I’m still bristling over the Pope sweet-talking Palestinians while tacitly supporting Israel.