Enough with the psychodrama between Netanpsycho and Obama! All’s well.

Netanpsycho and Obama Mar 21 2015

Enough with the melodrama about the strained relationship between Netanpsycho & Obama! To reduce the politics of Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing to a personality conflict is worse than banal. It’s political deceit.

It is possible the US objects to rhetorical excesses from Netanpsycho opposing the bantustate solution in Palestine & making it clear Israel wants all of Palestine–not because they disagree with Israel’s plans for the West Bank & Gaza, but because US neoliberal capitalism has long-term plans for Israel in the Middle East that Zionist irrationality & incitement threaten.

Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is US policy. The two countries are in cahoots & complete agreement. And the way we know that is because the entire Zionist assault on Palestinians would collapse without massive military & financial backing from the US. Is Obama squeamish about carpet bombing Gaza? After Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, that’s almost a stupid question. And the answer is, not in the least–or he wouldn’t have given millions more in military aid to Israel to carry out Operation Ethnic Cleansing last summer. Does he object to Israeli settlements in the West Bank? Not for a moment, because if he did he would cut off US funding to build them & for the Israeli occupation to make sure they get built. And he’d stop paying for settlers to move there. It’s the old “follow the money” thing. Or more aptly, follow the bombers & the tanks.

Israel is part of the US military phalanx in the Middle East & Netanpsycho understands that very well. He can blow smoke out his ass but the US will not cut the money or weapons flow. So he can blow hot but it’s just the neoliberal version of “good cop/bad cop.” Because in the end, what the US & Israel both want is the destruction of Palestine & the establishment of Israel as a military encampment. And in that regard, not just Palestinians now but Israeli Jews later are only the sacrificial lambs of neoliberal predation.

The most imperative historic mission is to build the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel & to demand no aid of any kind of Israel.

(Photo of the two schnooks from archives)

Caravana 43 rally in McAllen, Texas (Mary Scully Reports makes the news)

Caravana 43 Mar 21 2015

My neighbor stopped me today when I went to get the mail & told me she saw me she saw me interviewed on Spanish language television. This was news to me. At the Tuesday rally for the Aotzinapa 43 in front of the Mexican consulate I was interviewed & talked about the need to build international solidarity. The part on TV in English said “these parents are never going to see their kids again” but cut off as I continued with “without the broadest international solidarity” but in Spanish the reporter finished that thought.

I am hardly the center of this clip; it’s a very important event protesting at the Mexican consulate with the family members speaking and being interviewed here. It’s the first of many such rallies that will be held across the US as part of Caravana 43 to build the necessary solidarity movement.

I don’t believe I was so vain as to mention my blog www.maryscullyreports.com but the reporter must have googled it & showed it on the news segment. This is good.

Here’s the news segment: http://www.knvotv48.com/incrementan-las-llamadas-de-auxilio-en-la-ciudad-de-palmview/

(Photo is still shot from the video)

 

Media focuses on personal crime in Afghanistan but ignores war crimes

Afghanistan mmosque murder (Shah Marai:AFP:Getty Images) Mar 20 2015

Media (& not just the lowbrow tabloids) are reporting the gruesome murder of a mentally ill woman in Kabul, Afghanistan yesterday for allegedly burning a copy of the Quran. It was such a monstrous crime that one wishes they could get the story straight. She was beaten to death by a mob, set on fire, & dumped in the river. Most accounts say she was also lynched. Was she lynched before she was beaten to death? Or after she was set on fire? Some accounts say the mob included “thousands” despite video evidence to the contrary.

The photo of the Shahi Doshamshira mosque accompanying the story seems to have no relationship to the crime except proximity & use value in war propaganda. Weren’t there other landmarks in the neighborhood? Why couldn’t they just describe the crime since it wasn’t ordered by the imam?

There isn’t much value in comparisons pointing out that of the fifty cities in the world with the highest homicide rate, none are in Afghanistan while the US has four. It’s not even useful to point out that according to the World Health Organization the cost of personal violence in the US is more than $300 billion annually. Violence is so routine here it no longer makes the headlines. Such comparisons, however, do not minimize the horrors of this crime against a young woman.

What’s not irrelevant is the $642 billion (only up to 2013) the US has spent in Afghanistan bombing the place to smithereens & terrorizing the people under the guise of emancipating women. Isn’t that beauty salon in Kabul working for them? Reportedly, Kabul police have arrested seven of the perpetrators. There weren’t over a thousand but there were several more than seven, including those psychos who took videos while the murder was going on. One only wishes media was as assiduous in reporting US war violence as they are in operating as crime reporters in Kabul.

Our deepest condolences to the family of this young woman. And our continued opposition to the US war in Afghanistan.

US out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!

(Photo by Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)

Neoliberal waste management in Cambodia

Cambodia ( Athit Perawongmetha:Reuters) Mar 20 2015

Neoliberal waste management in Cambodia: this is Seu, a 13-year-old boy who earns 25 cents a day scavenging the Anlong Pi dump site, the main landfill for the city of Siem Reap. In the US you can’t even buy a piece of candy for 25 cents; he’d have to work four days for a gum drop. In Cambodia he’d have to work two & a half days to buy a liter of water, five & a half days to buy a potato. And child labor may not even be the worst of this story.

Anlong Pi has become one of the pity stops on the colonial slum tour cycle & everyday bus loads of voyeuristic tourists show up from around world to snap photos of the scavengers. A lot of photojournalists show up too. One of the more obtuse who might better stick to photographing flowers said: “They can’t seem to understand that a better life is possible. In that world where Jasmine flowers cannot grow, nothing has any worth but the daily wage. Poisoned environment, rusty nails, or buzzing flies don’t bother them.” In what universe is that cement-headed photographer living!? Does he think poverty means you’re too stupid to distinguish the smell of flowers from rotting food & feces? “Buzzing flies don’t bother them”?

In fact, in 1998, when Taiwan dumped a mountain of mercury-laden toxic waste in Cambodia, residents began protesting & fled their homes en masse. Several hundred of them had fallen sick from mercury poisoning after scavenging. Cambodian government officials who had accepted bribes from Taiwan for the dump then arrested & imprisoned the two human rights activists who alerted residents to the danger. They were both charged with inciting riot.

This dumping of hazardous waste, including radioactive & hospital waste, is often illegal according to country laws. But there is an entire international industry built on it, not of mafia enterprises but multinational corporations. By bribing government officials, fraud, & flagrant criminal irresponsibility, plundering countries dump megatons of toxic waste in the plundered countries. There are established routes: the US to Mexico & Bangladesh; Japan to the Philippines; Hong Kong to China; Taiwan to Cambodia; Italy to Somalia, Nigeria, Lebanon; the UK & other European countries to Nigeria & other African countries. Just to cite a few.

Criminal irresponsibility is here indistinguishable from the most stinking malevolent racism & elitism that considers some human beings inferior & disposable. The only toxic waste dump worth a damn is the one where we quarantine neoliberalism, the barbaric, toxic phase of capitalism.

(Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Israel’s false boasts about women’s rights

Israeli homeless woman  Mar 19 2015

Feminists around the world engaged in the titanic struggles against female oppression, who fight the state for reproductive freedom, against eugenics, employment discrimination, & barbaric violence against women are outraged at media misrepresentation of the movement as a white, middle-class, elitist project to break something called the “glass ceiling.” Most women are trying to get out of the minimum wage classification. We’re outraged that radicals demean & attempt to turn feminism into a campaign to legitimize prostitution, porn, & naked protests. But mostly we’re outraged that governments attempt to use women’s rights to justify war & genocide & use Islamophobia as a key element in that campaign.

Right-wing feminists, many of them huddled behind MS magazine, attempt to portray US wars as a crusade to liberate women. It’s no accident that many of them are also Zionists. The struggle against racism & social hatred is part of feminism, not at odds with it. But reactionary forces, connected to power through the Democratic Party, try to associate feminism with elitism, Islamophobia & war. Those feminists who reject social hatred must wrench the movement back from those who use it to serve neoliberal barbarism.

Today, Zionists are boasting of advances for women’s rights in Israel because 28 women were elected to the Knesset. Do those 28 women have the same politics as Netanpsycho? Do they stand with women’s rights for Palestinian as well as Israeli women or are they also racist up to their eyeballs? Do they make the face of Israeli apartheid a kinder, gentler thing or do they oppose it? Where do they stand on the embargo & carpet bombing of Gaza & on the settlements in the West Bank?

Last week, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, gave a touching speech to the General Assembly on women’s empowerment. Well if would have been touching if he didn’t include snide Islamophobic slurs & didn’t lie through his teeth about the status of women in Israel. He brought up stoning & honor killings & asked “Where else in the Middle East do you see women’s empowerment like you do in Israel?” Does he mean because women soldiers carry guns & participate in occupying Palestine? Because if you look at the reality of women’s lives in Israel, you can see our man is talking through his ass.

In the speech that would have been touching if there was an ounce of truth to it, Prosor said Israeli women “didn’t just break the glass ceiling; they shattered it.” But statistics speak louder than baloney: they show that Israeli women at the executive level earn 30% less than males & among ordinary working women, 25% less. And that doesn’t even address unemployment among Palestinian Israelis, Ethiopian Jews, & African refugees due to discrimination. Overall one in five Israelis live below the poverty line, giving Israel the highest poverty rate & one of the biggest income disparities between rich & poor of all the plundering countries.

It’s the same story with reproductive freedom in Israel. Abortion is only legal under certain circumstances & requires the approval of a committee. That’s bad enough but in 2013 Israel admitted to giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth control injections without their knowledge or consent, i.e., forced sterilization. As for prenatal care, for the past few years, Israel has been instituting austerity policies cutting back even more on social services–most importantly in health care for the poorest. With racism & ethnic cleansing as state policy, Bedouin Israelis are completely denied access to prenatal care, explaining their sky-high infant mortality rate.

There is one growth industry for women which Prosor didn’t mention: prostitution in Israel is a $500 million a year business. And homelessness is growing because Israel has a bloated military budget to sustain rather than build affordable housing.

So will the 28 women in the Knesset address the racism & misogyny of Israeli politics? Will they oppose apartheid, militarism, austerity, inequity, & genocide & forge alliances with Palestinians & African refugees against the regime? Because if they stand with apartheid, genocide, & neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, who gives a damn what gender they are!?

This photo is an Israeli homeless woman & her child in Jerusalem, Israel (2012) where there was an encampment of homeless people.

(Photo by Abir Sultan/EPA)

What makes the human race worth fighting for

Roma in India- Kamla, Mariam, Zarina, Manissa and Sabnam, Badka (‘The Roma Journeys' (India, 2001), Joakim Eskildsen) Mar 19 2015

The Israeli elections weigh heavy on those who believe strongly in human rights so we need to step back to gain perspective & nourish our spirit with the things that make the human race so worth fighting for.

This magnificent photo is from an album called “The Roma Journeys” taken in India in 2001. Joakim Eskildsen, the photojournalist, traveled to several countries (between 2000 & 2006) including Finland, France, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Russia, India to gain “insight into the life of the Roma & the conditions they face.” The history of Roma always begins with their origins in northern India but few accounts report that many still live there.

Eskildsen said he didn’t know what triggered his interest in the Roma but after spending considerable time with them & getting to know them, the more his interest & affection for them grew.
There’s something very special about young girls at this age. They’re independent, feisty, often lippy, & full of exuberance before the weight of misogyny begins to bear down on them. Their names are Kamla, Mariam, Zarina, Manissa, & Sabnam. They’re in their twenties now. May their lives be blessed in every way.

(Photo by Joakim Eskildsen)