The 4-star general is now running the White House. Call it a “soft coup” if you like, as the libertarians do, but Trump is no longer in charge of the West Wing. The guy who thought he could bully & bravado his way through power will now learn how ruthlessly US capitalism is really run.

It’s the libertarians who defend Trump & blither about Russiagate who are being left in the dust.

What do you bet those who really run the US moved in the 4-star general as Trump’s chief of staff? Enough fiasco! He’s there to straighten Trump out. Or else. The imaginary deep state triumphs. We await the day they escort out Kellyanne Conway, that Scarmucci creep, & eventually the dipshit-in-chief.

We have to do a Facebook wall appealing to or shaming Bryan Adams to honor the cultural boycott of Israel. The Palestinian BDS committee would put it in a more diplomatic way but we have several months to build a campaign to put the screws on him. Just so we don’t duplicate efforts & come up with more than one page, we can take a while to see what leading BDS organizations come up with to convince him to honor the boycott.

Bryan Adams, the dirtball, to play Israel despite Israeli ethnic cleansing

Bryan Adams July 31 2017

Radiohead front man Thom Yorke is an amoral meathead so when he calls the cultural boycott of Israel offensive & performs in Tel Aviv, that’s to be expected. But what do we call Bryan Adams who has scheduled two performances in Israel next December?

In August 2014 after seven weeks of Israeli carpet bombing laying waste to Gaza, Adams tweeted: “I can’t speak for others, I only speak for myself: I say the war against Gaza was a crime against humanity.” In the same thread he added: “The Israeli blockade of #Gaza just entered its 8th year, leaving its 1.7 million inhabitants destitute” & he went on to protest Israel “for murdering 2000+ people…541 kids” in Gaza.

A few weeks earlier he tweeted to protest then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper’s support for Israel: “Still waiting for the Canadian PM to denounce Israel’s disgraceful war against Gaza.” & “The UK PM is sending 20M in aid to #Gaza. Where is Canada’s support for the Palestinian people? #gazachildren.”

Three years later, with Gaza on the point of collapse, Adams announced two performances in Israel, one in Jerusalem where Israeli soldiers have been laying siege to the Al Aqsa compound & one in Tel Aviv which is close enough to Gaza that it will provide the sound track to ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Appropriate epithets to describe Adams fail. Meathead doesn’t cut it. Neither does contemptible. What can possibly suffice to describe a man who knows what Israel is doing in Gaza & the West Bank & chooses to cash in on it? Even dirtball falls shy.

Support the cultural boycott of Israel in defense of Palestinians.

(Photo is the dirtball Adams)

No conciliation with notion that Palestinian resistance is violence

Pal prayer worshipper arrested (July 31 2017

The Forward, a liberal Zionist publication, published an article titled “The Al Aqsa Protests Prove That Palestinian Nonviolence Has Arrived” by Palestinian Issa Amro. Amro begins the article: “My dream has always been to see my people in a mass movement of nonviolent resistance” & he describes the prayer protests in East Jerusalem against the occupation of the Al Aqsa compound. It’s an article worth reading from an activist in the West Bank but it is deeply misguided & conciliatory. It is not unarmed Palestinians who are violent but the Israeli military.

Amro apparently wants Palestinians to adopt the civil disobedience politics of Gandhi & Martin Luther King, Jr. How would that work out in Gaza with the blockade putting it on the point of collapse, without medical care, electricity, sewage systems, & living amidst rubble because the homes are all bombed to smithereens? How would that work out during Israel’s frequent carpet bombing sieges?

How would that passive stuff work out when settlers contaminate water wells, torch mosques, pull up olive trees, or when Israeli bulldozers mow down entire villages?

How does self-defense come across as violence to Amro? What are protesters in the West Bank supposed to do when Israeli soldiers come at them with bulldozers, tear gas, stun grenades? Stand in the path of those bulldozers peacefully? Like Rachel Corey did?
Get real! Palestinians have a right to defend themselves by any means necessary.

This young man is one of 160 Palestinian (30 under the age of 18) prayer protesters arrested during Al-Aqsa protests.

The Israeli use of Palestinian human shields

Pal human shield July 31 2017

Someone challenged my post about Israeli soldiers using a blindfolded Palestinian youth as a human shield. How do we know Israel does that, she asked? We know it from several reliable sources: photojournalist documentation, Palestinian testimony, frequent reports by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. The use of Palestinians, including children, as human shields by the Israeli army is beyond dispute.

Just like it is beyond dispute that Israeli bombers targeted children in the 2014 seven-week carpet bombing siege of Gaza. Of the 2,220 Palestinians killed, 547 were children; an additional 3,374 children were injured, 1,000 of them with permanent disabilities. Many require medical care unavailable in Gaza because of the Israeli blockade & destruction of Israeli medical facilities in the siege & they are unable to get permission from Israel to seek medical care elsewhere.

Then our challenger said an Israeli once told her the “conflict goes mostly unnoticed by Israelis because it’s not anywhere near them & doesn’t touch their lives.” Wow, isn’t that a mouthful of foolishness! All non-Palestinian citizens of Israel over 18 are subject to conscription to serve in the occupation. Does that leave them unaffected? Israel, the colonial-settler state, borders 41 kilometers (25 mi) with Gaza & 708 kilometers (440 mi) with the West Bank. Is all that war-mongering about Hamas rockets a great big fat lie? Because we are told Israelis living within 50 miles of the Gaza border live in terror of those rockets even though the few documented are no bigger than potholes.

But let’s get one thing straight: Israelis are human beings living in a militarized, colonial state on permanent red alert because their military is engaged in ethnic cleansing which Palestinians resist with all their might. Even if complicit in that colonial project–& not all Israelis are–enforcing apartheid & racism does not leave most Israelis unaffected. Militarism affects every aspect of society, corrupting everything, leaving nothing untouched, creating violence within the society after glorifying it in occupation.

Photo is Palestinian boy being used as a human shield by Israeli army.

A Rohingya friend of mine has made a dramatic change to better understand the freedom struggle & how he can best serve it. He could really use all your prayers & blessings. It’s a very tough struggle against insuperable odds but not a hopeless one with activists like him & support from thousands of us. Please keep him in your prayers & hearts.

Sometimes it gets to me that so few progressive or socialist journals write about the freedom struggle in Kashmir. Educating & building a solidarity movement should be a political priority. But then I remember that most of them wrote almost nothing about Palestinians, BDS, or the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011-2013.

At one point, I told a fellow from the grouplet Socialist Action that their lack of reporting about Palestinians & failure to build BDS was the sign of significant political problems within the organization. It could even be called a betrayal. Jeff Mackler, the guru of the SA cult, emailed me a single, not particularly informed article he had written on Palestine to show me I was wrong.

It should come as no surprise that Mackler & SA are now leading figures in the Hands Off Syria Coalition, reducing themselves to apologetics for Assad against charges of using sarin gas to bomb civilians. That kind of political corruption has explanations that should be investigated because most other socialist groups share their stinking decline into alliance with fascists. Whither goest such a left? Eventually into oblivion. And not fast enough.

Palestinian woman takes on Israeli soldiers

Palestinian woman with IDF July 30 2017

You know those sophisticated, secular feminists who think US bombers will liberate Muslim women from the veil & bring those patriarchal Muslim men to their knees? The worst of them should be told to shove it where the sun don’t shine; those who racism has not corrupted beyond redemption should be told to look to the women of Palestine, Kashmir, & the Arab uprisings to see what modern, revolutionary feminism looks like.

(Photo of Palestinian woman taking on Israeli soldiers from Twitter)

Israeli soldiers use blindfolded Palestinian teen as human shield

Tweeted by Occupied Palestine July 29 2017

Remember how Elie Wiesel, the Zionist ideologue, published full page ads during the 2014 Israeli carpet bombing siege of Gaza claiming Palestinians used their children as human shields? Remember when Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress playing Wonder Woman & an ardent Zionist, supported that bombing siege claiming Palestinians used their women & children as human shields?

Wiesel has croaked but Gadot should be asked to explain this photo of Israeli soldiers using a blindfolded Palestinian as a human shield–& not for the first time but as a practice of the occupation.

Long live Palestinian Intifada. End the occupation. Self-determination for Palestine. Support BDS.

(Photo tweeted by Occupied Palestine)