We should take a moment to honor the democracy protesters in Bahrain, especially the women who play a leading role in the Bahraini revolution & put the lie to all the misogynist crap about women wearing veils. If you want to know where their tough kids learned defiance against violent tyranny, take a look at this woman who showed up at yesterday’s protests wearing swimming goggles against tear gas.

Yesterday activists marked the 4th anniversary of the Bahraini revolution with demonstrations. The US Fifth Fleet & a new British naval base are situated in Bahrain to control the Gulf region & are vital in the campaign against ISIL. That means the democracy movement is up against the combined barbarism of the Bahrain regime, the US & UK. As if that weren’t enough, the media plays a pernicious role in fabricating a story about the democracy movement that turns it into a sectarian conflict between two denominations of Islam. And that deception includes Al-Jazeera & The Huntington Post. Anyone who has followed the Bahraini movement knows that narrative is designed to discredit the struggle against tyranny in Bahrain. Religious differences have played no role in the political movement.

All media have been proclaiming the uprising defeated & deader than a doornail, with headlines like “Bahrain Protesters Rally On Anniversary Of Crushed Uprising” & “Uprising crushed.” One wonders where the media gets their news. You can’t really believe estimates of the size of the protests since it’s established media practice to underestimate the size of progressive actions & inflate the size of right-wing events. But it seems likely the protests were smaller than usual, not because the fervor for social change has been crushed but because the regime threatened that even calls for protests would be treated like a crime & activists prosecuted for ‘spreading terror’. For the past several months, they’ve been stripping activists of their citizenship & throwing them into the gulag. And still protests continued.

Thousands of riot cops were deployed to thwart anniversary protests; they set up checkpoints & went nuts with the tear gas to prevent protesters from gathering. Hundreds were arrested, hundreds seriously injured by police assaults. One activist reported he saw hundreds of armed people in civilian clothes attacking protesters. Many protesters were shot but could not be taken to hospitals because they would likely be arrested, as happened in the 2011 uprising. Medical staff treating them then were prosecuted & incarcerated.

After all that, Al Jazeera had the chutzpah to repeat the Associated Press claim that protesters were violent, using rocks & petrol bombs to block roads & defy riot cops. They must be taking their cues from media coverage of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation & ethnic cleansing.

The Guardian-UK caption to this photo referred to clashes with police over the right to assemble as “riots.” Would that the rest of suffering humanity had mothers who taught their kids how to “riot.”
Our fullest respect & solidarity with the Bahraini revolution. We regret the movement in the US is too weak to restrain the Pentagon. Your intransigence will help to change that.

(Photo by Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty)

This is the Shejaiya neighborhood in Gaza City, a residential area bombed to smithereens by Israel last summer. The photo was taken in a recent sandstorm. The bombing buried many alive & has left thousands homeless in winter. This is what’s called a war crime, even though the UN needs a special commission to determine what our eyes can see.

The Guardian-UK caption to this photo read: “The buildings were destroyed during last year’s 50-day war between Israel & Hamas-led militants.” Sometimes the media lies about Palestine simply take your breath away.

(Photo by Mohammed Abed)

Now do you see why the US is in so much trouble? This is the criminal lineup of presidents for the dedication of Ronald Reagan’s presidential library in 1991. They all get one as a reward–though there’s little indication any of them ever cracked a book. Other than criminality, stupidity seems to be the only thing they have in common. They detest each other & that’s fully understandable.

George Bush the senior (& parent to an even bigger stupenagle & war criminal), was the current president here. He had just returned from a peace mission to the MIddle East. When the concept of peace is arming brutal tyrannies you can understand why the world is a mess wherever the US shows up.

People in other countries should not think badly of us for electing these jamokes. A rigged electoral system gives us only two choices. If these guys were the “lesser of two evils” consider the option we had.

(Photo by Anne Cusack/LA Times)

The first Copenhagen shooting was at a cafe right around dinner time. So there you have it! Another dispute over a parking space. Parking wasn’t a problem at 1:00 am when the second shooting took place at the synagogue? In these scenarios things don’t need to add up, do they? They don’t when Muslims are the victims.

Late breaking news on Associated Press tells us the synagogue is right near a bar. You see? Another parking dispute!

Though I’m no Sherlock Holmes but the story about the second shooting at a synagogue in central Copenhagen doesn’t add up. Probably it’s because all the facts aren’t in or maybe it’s because it stinks of “untruthiness.” A lone gunman shot at a synagogue at 1 am this morning. One unidentified person was shot in the head & two cops were injured.

So what was the person who got shot doing at the synagogue at 1 am? Was s/he just a passerby? Why were the two cops there? Did they just happen to pass by too? How did anybody know the place was shot up if most of the city was snoring?

This gunman also fled with his rifle on foot and one media source suggested he fled to the nearby crowded subway station. A man with a high-powered weapon didn’t draw attention to himself while he waited for the train?

We leave the sleuthing till more details are revealed.

This is a “call to arms” for Palestinian supporters & civil liberties advocates: Miko Peled, the Israeli anti-apartheid activist, was shut out by FB about two weeks ago because they claim his ID cannot be verified & he might be trolling. In a pig’s eye! Peled is a prominent figure who plays a pivotal role in Palestinian solidarity & FB would know that if they looked at the number of his friends, the activity on his wall, or just googled his name. He believes they are politically censoring him & that can hardly be in dispute.

Last year Facebook pulled the same stunt with Hamde Abu Rahma, a Palestinian photojournalist in the West Bank. Hundreds of FB supporters of his work rallied & campaigned to have his account restored, which it was. When your account is shut down, you lose an accounting of your friends, your photos, the discussions & you have to start from scratch. Facebook informed Peled that to reinstate his account it has to be under a different name or if someone else does it on his behalf. Once again, all they have to do is google his name. But of course, they already know exactly who he is.

So do we, which is why we value his exemplary work & role; his support for Palestinian justice is tough-minded & uncompromising. We need to assemble our forces on social media & get Miko Peled’s original Facebook account reinstated. Can those who lead the campaign for reinstating the account of Hamde please let us know the best way to proceed? Can everyone please share this post & information far & wide to solidarity activists in defense of Miko & of civil liberties on Facebook.

Petition site: http://mikopeled.com/2015/02/03/1085/

(Photo of Miko Peled)

We don’t know anything about the gunman in Copenhagen who opened fire today on a cafe where they were holding a panel entitled, “”Art, blasphemy & the freedom of expression.” The event was to mark the 25-year anniversary of the Iranian fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie. Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist notorious for depicting Mohammed as a dog, & Inna Shevchenko, a leader of FEMEN & open hater of Arabs & Islam, were in attendance but unharmed. One of the guises Islamophobia now uses is apparently freedom of art & expression.

One wonders why after Charlie Hebdo such an event would not be surrounded by a phalanx of security guards but it may have beefed up security since three cops were injured in the melee. Or were they the security guards Vilks now travels with? The Danish Prime Minister called it “a political assassination & thus a terrorist attack.” Nothing like a rush to judgement since they still haven’t apprehended the gunman & don’t know his motives.

We know there are extremists & psychos who identify with Islam; there are plenty of psychos who identify with Christianity (witness the Westboro church)–not to mention who identify with socialism. Until they apprehend the shooter we don’t know who he is or what motivates him. It’s very likely they’ll corner the guy & take him out because dead men don’t talk & they can make up any story they like. That isn’t apologetics nor is it conspiracy theory. Islamophobia is the gestalt of neoliberal capitalism justifying it’s many wars. Setting up loose cannons to pull this kind of action off is what agents provocateurs do.

We leave crime-solving to the Danish police. What matters to defenders of civil liberties is how this incident will be used against Muslims around the world. Already an Oregon talk show host said, “Muslims killing in the name of blasphemy has to stop! They either learn to live in a pluralistic society or we need to remove them from that society as an act of self defense.” That inflammatory statement is a call to violence for the loose cannons who hate Muslims & love war.

The only way to turn this tsunami of hatred back is to stand against the wars justified by Islamophobia & to stand with Palestinians. There are spring antiwar marches planned demanding “No US wars in Afghanistan & Iraq!” There will be rallies & forums building the economic & cultural boycott of Israel. Be there or be square.

This haunting photo is 7-year-old Khalid after his shrapnel wounds were treated by US army medics in the Korengal Valley in northeastern Afghanistan. It was taken in 2007 by Lynsey Addario, then a NY Times photojournalist, but first published in her recent memoir “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love & War” where she describes its unsavory political history & the role of media in covering for US war crimes.

Korengal Valley is a sliver of mountainous terrain only six-miles long & a half-mile wide but for the duration of the war it has been a focus of intense US-NATO land & aerial assault because it borders the area of Pakistan where US drones & the Pakistani air force have been attempting to bomb out the Taliban. An estimated one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in Korengal & 70% of US-NATO bombs are dropped in the area.

Addario was assigned along with writer Elizabeth Rubin to cover the area for the NY Times Magazine in 2007 at the same time British photojournalist Tim Hetherington & writer Sebastian Junger were assigned there by Vanity Fair magazine. Both teams were embedded with US troops.

The NY Times team went there originally to report the affects of massive bombing on civilians, including what Rubin referred to as “collateral damage.” (When you start talking the language of the military you might consider un-embedding your head from the Pentagon’s ass.) The article shifted from less about civilian deaths to a profile of Captain Dan Kearney, in charge of a US platoon. On a followup trip, Rubin’s video documentation primarily follows Kearney (referred to by Rubin as Dan) & his platoon as they try to take out the Taliban.

Originally, the NY Times Magazine was going to publish this photo of Khalid with Rubin’s article. But just days before publication, fact checkers at the NY Times asked for evidence the injuries were caused by bombing shrapnel. Since the story had shifted from civilian deaths to hunting the Taliban & glorifying Kearney, the photo wasn’t so relevant anymore but this was one of the few photos of civilians injured or killed by bombing. Addario, Rubin, & even Captain Kearney agreed it was from shrapnel because they were present when Afghan elders brought the boy for treatment & said he was injured the previous night when the US bombed a compound where the boy lived. The NY Times instead took the word of public relations officers from the US military who said that could not be verified. Addario protested the blatant censorship to the NY Times, which did not use the photo because it does not suit the Pentagon script about the US-NATO war. (Addario doesn’t tell us much about her views on the war.)

Hetherington & Junger were also embedded with a US army company in Korengal Valley & made an industry out of their work. Combined, they’ve produced three documentaries & each a book on the experience. Their 2010 film, “Restrepo” was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary & received several other awards. A sequel by Junger (Hetherington was killed in 2011 during the US-NATO war in Libya) using Hetherington’s footage was produced in 2014. Hetherington received many awards for his work.

Like Rubin, Junger & Hetherington focused on the human experience & emotional distress of US soldiers using the film tagline, “This is what war feels like.” Some reviewers faulted the documentaries for divorcing the personal trauma of soldiers from the politics of the war. In fact, that’s baloney. Both Junger & Hetherington supported US-NATO wars in Afghanistan, Libya, & elsewhere & detested those who opposed intervention. At his death, Hetherington was feted by the Pentagon, right-wing veterans, & people like Senator John McCain.

Focusing on soldiers was their way to ennoble the US-NATO war. Ignoring the affects of fighting & bombing in Korengal Valley on Afghan civilians was an expression of colonialism, white supremacy, & pro-war ardency. Afghans were intentionally excluded in that tagline, “This is what war feels like” because to racist, colonial thinkers what Afghans feel like when they’re being bombed to smithereens is of no consequence whatsoever.

Join the spring antiwar protests demanding “US out of Afghanistan!” “US out of Iraq!”

(Photo by Lynsey Addario)

If anyone needs proof that corporate funding makes you stupid check out PBS on TV & NPR on the radio. What distinguishes them from the networks is pomposity & an aura of intellectualism while they tell you everything you don’t want to know about a news event.

NY Times reporter David Brooks is a regular commentator on PBS news. He has an impressive pedigree, an expensive education, & political grooming by William F. Buckley, Jr. That grooming done him in. With a far less pretentious vocabulary than Buckley & a curious inability to spit it out when he’s talking his viewers are subjected to twitchy commentary chock-full of banalities. Oh let’s be frank: idiocies.

He’s an ugly-assed Zionist who claims Jewish intellectualism & achievement is superior to others. A guy who twitches & mumbles while drooling inanities should give serious thought to making that claim. Tonight the moderator asked him about ISIL. It took him a moment to congeal a thought–if what he says qualifies as thought–but he produced this gem: “The Middle East has always been the Middle East. For 5,000 years it’s been a trouble zone. The Islamic State seems to be a new order, a new order of magnitude, a new sort of threat building on an ideological threat, a unique level of evil even by the standards of the Middle East.” If you put a melody & beat to that you could do the hootchy-kootchy. But don’t try to swing it past political activists who actually know something. If our man was ever subjected to a Q & A session he’d be eaten alive by even simple minds.

It’s just so deplorable you can only get important news in the checkout line at the supermarket. Many frugal news junkies no longer pay for internet & just stand in line all day, with one product at a time, so they can find out what’s going on in the world from National Inquirer, Globe, & People magazine. One Texas supermarket has actually set up bathroom stalls & lounge chairs at checkout so people can do their duty, catch up on news, & shop in one fell swoop. What has this world come to!?

Today we find out Betty Windsor wants to give up the throne so she can go into hiding from the shame of her kids. We’re surprised Betty knows shame. It’s heartening so we don’t want to taunt, but what did she expect when she married flatulent Phil? Even in his youth he was no prize package. Now they can’t tell if he’s dead or alive without poking him with a stick & they’ve hired a special vassal to do that.

Betty’s had more than her share of misery with those kids. We won’t even go into Andrew who needs to go from drug rehab straight to a penitentiary. It’s Cammy that’s distressing. They say she’s so eaten alive with jealousy over KKKKaty that she turned to whiskey for comfort & they had to force her into an ashram in India to detox with meditation, medicated oils, & vegetarian foods. We wouldn’t wish an addiction problem on anyone but Cammy needs to give up a lot more than chateaubriand & whiskey to recover. She needs to dump Charlie because he could drive anyone to drink. The only reason Betty is still sober is because she never liked her own kids. Or anybody else’s. That’s why it’s so easy to strip social services, education, & healthcare to pad her coffers. Cammy doesn’t have to ostracize; she & Betty can still play the horses together since it’s the only thing in their lives with meaning. That & Betty’s Yorkies.

Well, according to the Globe, the plot sickens. They report Willy doesn’t want to be king. But that doesn’t make sense. Why is he walking around like he has a pole stuck up his butt & an attitude if he just wants to live plebeian? Globe might be falling for PR here about Willy & KKKKaty. Betty knows if they don’t play that plebeian thing out those republicans will be crawling up her ass with demands for ending moochocracy. She’s walking a thin line here between scandal, perversion, idiocy, & exhaustion. We do wish we could confidently include shame in that litany.

They say KKKKaty is looking forward to being queen. She thinks the food rations may be increased from one biscuit a day to two & she may be able to get a lump of sugar in her tea.

The trial in Texas of Eddie Ray Routh for the murder of American Sniper (more aptly called American Psycho) Chris Kyle & another guy gives a window into the psychosis that afflicts law, politics, militarism, war propaganda, & all of social life in the US. The ironies in the defense & prosecution of Routh are worthy of the Greek tragedians or Shakespeare but when the drama all shakes out, & if you can get past the burlesque, what remains is the criminal neglect of troubled veterans & the adulation of war criminals.

At the age of 25, Eddie Ray Routh shot to death Kyle & & another veteran Chad Littlefield at a shooting range in 2013. Routh served in the Iraq War from 2006 to 2010 & was deployed to Haiti in 2010. He was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in 2011. As his behavior spiraled out of control with homicidal threats & violence, drugs & booze, in & out of psychiatric wards, his mother Jodi Routh approached the media-feted Kyle for help–the last person on this earth she should have trusted with her seriously disturbed son. So Kyle took the guy under his wing because helping veterans was part of the schtick he created to make himself a hero in the public eye. What could possibly go wrong?

Kyle, heralded as “the deadliest sniper in American military history,” was a former bronco rider in the rodeo & a farm hand. He had no training in psychology, addiction, trauma, mental illness, PTSD, & he glorified murder. Since he was a thrill-killer, Kyle was never troubled by PTSD. On the contrary, his psychosis was rewarded big-time by media war mongering, including Clint Eastwood’s film, right-wing war mongers & talk shows, & military bloggers.

Apparently in pro-war veteran circles & among right-wing gun nuts, gun therapy is considered therapeutic. Shooting a gun, smelling gunpowder, hearing the crack of gunfire is alleged to trigger a therapeutic response in those suffering PTSD. That must explain why so many veterans are involved in homicidal, even mass murder incidents & why now 22 veterans a day commit suicide. They’re trying to relive the thrill of war. The VA can skip the counseling & meds & just hand them all AK-47s. That’s why Kyle & Littlefield took the deranged Routh to a gun range. Unfortunately he took out his therapy on them.

Defense lawyers claim Routh was psychotic at the time. Kyle’s phone conversations with his wife enroute to the gun range make clear that Kyle thought that too & if anybody would know psychotic, it would be Kyle. But much more damning is that the two cowboy therapists took Routh to a gun range when he was completely drunk. Now that’s nuts!

Prosecutors claim Routh knew what he was doing when he murdered the two guys. And the trial hinges on whether he could distinguish right from wrong. What happened to the PTSD diagnosis? Did his war-generated mental illness disappear sometime between the 2011 diagnosis & the 2013 murder? Was he all cured when he went to the gun range? Media & other war apologists parse the PTSD saying Routh never served in direct combat so it’s questionable he had it. Do you have to actually kill people to get PTSD in a war zone? And why didn’t Kyle have it when he excelled at mass murder? So many unanswered questions; so much baloney.

You knew it had to come up when the extreme right-wing is involved. Here’s where burlesque enters the story. On military blogs & goofball right-wing talk shows they’ve found a Routh link to Islam. They analyzed his facial hair & found it matches the profile of a convert. Examining his military record, they found Routh was a prison guard over “Muslim terrorists” at an airbase in Baghdad in 2007. They claim (without breaking a smirk), “He never served in battle, but spent most of his time looking & talking to Muslims in jail. He could have likely interacted with the inmates & got converted; prison has a higher conversion rate than any mosque.” As the analysis continues, he murdered Kyle & Littlefield because Kyle was a well-known Islamohobe. Whoever said satire was dead never met a right-ring talk show host in the US?

What this kangaroo court of a mentally ill veteran exposes is the vicious treatment & neglect of veterans by the US government who talk out of two sides of their ass about soldiers, lauding them as heroes at recruitment & parade time & then dumping them when they come back with mangled bodies & souls. In the Janus-face of US war propaganda, Routh is one face & Kyle is the other. Routh was chewed up by the war (likely from watching prisoners being tortured according to the CIA manual) & Kyle went on to become a celebrity for thrill-killing.

The only response to this at once tragedy & farce is to join the spring protests demanding US out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!

(Photo Eddie Ray Routh & his mother Jodi Routh from the Routh family/AP)