Do you think there really might be a “vast right-wing conspiracy” trying to bring Hillary Clinton down? Good! Now she knows how we feel.

Some people don’t like satire & think it cruel. But that’s exactly what’s so endearing about it. At its best, in words & image it skewers power & pretense combining vengeance with hilarity.

This is a depiction of Margaret Thatcher by English cartoonist Gerald Scarfe–although this is less her caricature than a psychological profile. The poor thing was an elitist, vicious mess & might better have been institutionalized with the criminally insane. There was international jubilation when she finally croaked. Not unlike when Omar Suleiman was iced. Or the anticipated festivities when Henry Kissinger drops.

It isn’t easy to be lacerating & sarcastic in cartoons & also disguise your racism or misogyny & you see that often in caricatures of people like Hillary Clinton, Obama, & Netanpsycho. There isn’t a reason in the world to stay away from going after them; you just have to eschew the cliches of elitism & supremacy. Scarfe did a damn good job. We need to sic him on Clinton & Obama. He’s already taken out Netanpsycho. They should be faulted for making such good material for satire.

The graffiti behind the pedestrian is dedicated to the Jewish holocaust in Salonika (also known as Thessaloniki), a port on the Aegean Sea in northeastern Greece. The city, which is the second largest in Greece & a major economic, industrial, commercial, & political center, has a complex 2,300 year history covering the Roman, Byzantine, & Ottoman Empires.

In 1941, during WWII, the German Nazi army occupied Greece & began rounding up Jews for deportation on cattle cars to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland. They deported & exterminated an estimated 60,000 Jews. Very few escaped their dragnet.

Jews have a long history in Solonika, including a massive influx of Sephardic Jews from Spain to escape the Inquisition in the 15th century. It was a politically dynamic population that in the late 19th century, along with the rest of the world, began to become industrialized & a Jewish working class developed.

Under the leadership of a remarkable guy named Avraam Benaroya (b. 1887), a Bulgarian Jewish immigrant, they formed the Socialist Workers’ Federation in 1909 which became the strongest socialist party in the Ottoman Empire. Benaroya was a bone-deep internationalist who opposed Zionism which was very weak in Jewish politics at that time & opposed the First World War. He split from the socialist movement over their support for the war & helped form the Greek Communist Party. His tenure there didn’t last very long–apparently due to the Stalinizing regime of communist parties. He suffered exile, imprisonment, & survived a Nazi concentration camp.

He had an extraordinary, stressful, & complex political life & certainly deserves a biography. He was a stalwart opponent of antisemitism & every kind of nationalist chauvinism & oppression in the labor movement. There’s no indication he ever became a Zionist though he moved to Israel to retire in 1953 at the age of 66. He died in 1979 at the age of 92.

Jews in Salonika commemorate the holocaust which devastated their community. Regrettably Jewish politics there today are very much influenced by Zionism. We don’t let that stop us from taking a moment to honor those 60,000 people trucked like cattle to a horrific fate based on genocidal social hatred & to honor activists like Avraam Benaroya whose contributions should never be forgotten.

(Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)

The families of these three young men among the 43 disappeared student teachers of Ayotzinapa in the Mexican state of Guerrero spoke today in McAllen,Texas. They’re on the first leg of a nationwide US tour to tell the truth about what happened to their beloved sons, to build solidarity & international pressure on the Mexican government to return their sons safely & as Jose’s mother said, “just as when they took them.”

The testimony of the three family members was powerful, direct, & very personal. They described that they are farmworkers in Mexico with children & a living to earn but were taking this time, despite fear of government reprisals, to fight for the return of their children. They believe & made a compelling case that their sons are still alive in one of Mexico’s clandestine prisons. They are not just expressing wishful thinking but have the assistance of an Argentine forensics team & six international experts on forced disappearances.

Their testimonies cut through the government lies reported in media & made it absolutely clear the Mexican military abducted their children at the behest of top state officials. They hold the governor of Guerrero & Mexican President Peña Nieto as guilty as the mayor of Iguala who may have ordered the hit & the military who carried it out. Mexican officials have piled lie on top of lie to deflect responsibility away from them. They claim corrupt municipal cops handed the 43 students to drug cartel thugs who killed them, incinerated their bodies, & dumped them in the river. The families tell a different story.

On September 26th 2014, the students were on a mission to raise donations in Iguala for an October 2nd trip to Mexico City–ironically to join the annual commemoration of the 1968 Tlatelolco police massacre of hundreds of protesting students. In a police assault on the Ayotzinapa bus, six students were murdered & many injured. One student had his face ripped off & was thrown to the side of the road; one was in a vegetative state & taken to the hospital “eventually.” The many injured sought medical help but the doctor who did not want to treat them phoned the municipal police who instead sent the military–the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican army based in Iguala.

When the military arrived at the hospital, they confiscated cell phones from students (taunting them “If this is what you want, take it like a man”) & abducted them. Jose’s mother said she phoned her son’s cell several times on the morning of the 27th. The person answering said her son was detained. Officials of the 27th Battalion claim they witnessed the police attack but did not intervene. And the parents believe they are lying through their teeth.

Family & human rights protesters have held protests at the army garrison of the 27th Battalion but are being stonewalled by the military & the Peña Nieto regime. If they are ever to see their sons again the broadest international solidarity must be built & the families are determined to do that. Christian’s father said they have been invited to speak in Poland, Germany, & the Philippines, as they are presently on the US tour. If activists around the world cannot afford to finance a speaking tour they could consider holding forums using Skype.

“An injury to one is an injury to all” is a simple declaration but it is the iron law of social transformation. Disappearance is a human rights crime in over 30 countries including thousands of victims. The young men of Ayotzinapa were abducted because they were activists against social tyranny. We need to do what we can to help their families get them back.

(If anyone wants to contribute money for the tour, please let me know & I will give you contact info.)

St. Patrick’s Day is the only day I pretend I’m Norwegian. That way people won’t think I’m related to this guy. It’s enough I gotta drink green beer.

(Reveler at London St. Patrick’s Day parade by Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA)

So much for going all defensive about that anthropomorphism thing! This picture pretty much finishes off the Platonic nonsense about a Great Chain of Being descending from angels to royalty to the rest of us all the way down to rocks.

Of course long before this picture was taken the Great Chain got jammed up when it hit the slugs in Buckingham Palace. Betty Windsor’s clan just did it in.

But back to these beautiful creatures expressing such mother & child love. They make your heart sing.

(From the Facebook wall of Veterinaria)

The Exodus mythology claiming Jews have a Biblical land grant to Palestine is falling apart at the seams. The sound track of Andy Williams crooning “The Exodus Song: This Land is Mine” is drowned out by the sound of Israeli bombers over Gaza.

That worthless lie has been diligently cultivated for over 70 years in film, song, & on TV. Since it’s lost its ability to bring on the tears they’re dragging out the Hamas & jihadi scares & they’re cropping up everywhere: in the TV series Law & Order, The Good Wife (tonight’s episode), Odyssey (a new series), NCIS, The Blacklist. That way, when Israel opens another murderous bombing assault on Gaza, the American people will be pumped for support.

This is the time to build the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel with forums, rallies, flash mobs, speak-outs. Defending Palestinians matters because they show suffering humanity the way forward by their steadfast refusal to bend the knee to apartheid & ethnic cleansing. Their importance is not dependent on their size but because the future of social hatred & tyranny in the Middle East depends on their successful struggle–not just for Palestinians but Jews & the Arabs of other countries.

Cruising Zionist sites on Facebook is quite an education. You learn that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has a plant in Israel; how many of your FB friends “like” Netanyahu; that actor Michael Douglas is born again to Judaism & a feted Zionist; a lot of Zionists are animal lovers but support ethnic cleansing of human beings in Gaza; the annual Zionist parade in NYC will exclude Jewish groups that support BDS & all entrants are required to “identify with Israel as a Jewish & democratic state & recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people”; & that Israel hired a bunch of retired US generals to attest how laudatory Israeli efforts were to minimize civilian casualties during Operation Ethnic Cleansing last summer. They did this through phone calls & leaflets moments before they took out entire neighborhoods with “low impact bombs.”

Mostly what you learn is that Zionism has a deep strain of irrationality & paranoia. Understanding the social psychology of Zionism is no easy matter. One can understand paranoic anxiety in refugees from the holocaust–& even in their children & grandchildren. But how do you account for it in a guy like Douglas born to immense privilege who’s likely never experienced a moment of persecution in his entire life? Or in Christian Zionists who repeat this rubbish?

Some of that craziness is fed by the US Pentagon. Despite 50 days of carpet bombing & overwhelming photographic evidence of massive destruction in Gaza, the US Joint Chief of Staffs attested that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage & prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.” US military officials analyzed UN satellite photos during Operation Ethnic Cleansing & found that 72% of all bombed out areas in Gaza were “within two miles of the Israeli border.” The meaning of that statistic escapes reason however it should be pointed out that Gaza may be 25 miles long (41 kilometers) but it is only 3.7 to 7.5 miles wide (6 to 12 kilometers).

But bar none, the most crazy-assed Zionist claim of all is that Palestinians never existed. They’re a “fake creation ordered & constructed” by the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Palestinian people were “invented” from a “mass immigration from Egypt & Saudi Arabia with the purpose to commit jihad.” You can say this crap is from the lunatic wing of Zionism but it’s indistinguishable from the rantings of Israeli politicians.

This little boy in Gaza is real & the mountains of cement rubble behind him are real. If Zionists have to deny reality to make their case against irrefutable evidence, if the best they can do for defense is falsify history, then those who support Israel against Palestinian justice need to have their heads examined.

(Photo from Global Research)

Palestinian teens in Gaza are doing parkour off the Banksy mural of an Israeli army watch tower in Beit Hanoun, the town where Israeli bombers took out a school used by the UN as a refugee center during Operation Ethnic cleansing last July. Fifteen, mostly women & children, were killed & 200 were injured, including disfiguring & disabling shrapnel damage. It’s only a few miles across the border from Sderot, Israel where residents pulled up easy chairs to get a front row seat to genocide.

There’s an irony here that should not be missed & was almost certainly intended by the teens. Parkour grew out of military obstacle-course training. It’s something of a rejection of formalized gymnastics training, has no formal moves, no equipment, & requires no dedicated space like a gym but uses public space. According to the Frenchman who helped develop it, parkour is a training method for “warriors” to help overcome physical barriers & mental & emotional obstacles.

The most important part of parkour is not the gymnastics but the philosophy which rejects competition & rivalry. The point is not to show off movements or feel superior over others but “to touch the world & interact with it, instead of being sheltered by it.” That philosophy would strongly suggest its roots in working class culture & certainly explains why it is so popular among working class youth in Palestine.

This video by the teens doing parkour around Banksy graffiti throughout Gaza shows the irony is very much intended & very politically astute.
http://www.theguardian.com/…/banksy-parkour-gaza-shadia-man…

This gangly & exhausted little guy is a 13-year-old boy named Nuru Haruna, a child gold miner in Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is one of the African countries under the whip of World Bank & IMF neoliberal tyranny. Even the NY Times, a voice of US capitalism, calls them “the overlords of Africa” because they took up where colonialism left off. Both agencies are instruments of US foreign policy where the plundered countries become suppliers of raw materials & free trade zones & the Pentagon & CIA are used to crush democracy to better serve plunder.

According to the World Bank’s own statistics, massive poverty in African countries has increased over 75% under their economic & political tyranny. That means more than half of Africa’s population live below the World Bank’s outrageous poverty line of US $1.00 a day.

Mining is one of the primary natural resources foreign corporations go after which requires land grabs from farmers, wrenching the economy from agriculture to extractive industries, & forcing millions to migrate either to urban slums or to other countries for work. Some of the bigger mines are run by foreign mining outfits; hundreds are artisanal operations & the World Bank fosters these because the profits are so massive. Mining company agents buy the gold from small-time operators at dirt cheap prices & sell them on the gold exchange for the going rate which today stands at US $1,600 an ounce.

Child labor is widespread in the artisanal mines & this is no accident–no matter how many crocodile tears UN child welfare agencies pour out all over media accounts. Fundamental to World Bank & IMF austerity policies is destruction of labor power & unionization, & reducing adult workers to unemployed & desperate beggars. Child labor has advantages in that process by getting the work done at levels of super-exploitation & violence.

Part of World Bank & IMF policies are privatizing education, health care, housing so that ordinary working people cannot afford to send their kids to school. For heavens sake, they can’t afford to buy food. Family poverty & economics require children be sent out to work to afford food & housing. This is when UN & NGO officials, political officials, & even World Bank officials come on stage to feign distress at the massive numbers of children leaving school to work the mines.

Their narrative is heartbreaking & up to its eyeballs in hypocrisy & deceit: they’ve tried to discourage Burkina Faso kids from abandoning schools for the mines. They’ve tried to make school “a pleasant place with games & sports.” They’ve tried to “sensitize parents to curb the trend” of truancy. They think maybe they should hold national debates on the issue because parents & kids just don’t get the importance of education.

But along with the crocodile tears, they change the laws to facilitate artisanal mining, encourage foreign investors, & impose austerity on social services. What about a little investment in schools, health care, housing!? In one of the hand-wringing orgies, the minister of education claimed they delivered food to schools in a region known for poor harvests to prevent kids from working the mines & dissuade parents from sending them. But they only had cereal for part of the year. Are we supposed to believe this tripe!?

Since the World Bank & IMF are agencies of US neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, it’s politically imperative that US working people understand what’s going on in our names in other countries. Because if we don’t get off our leaden asses to oppose this, chickens have a way of coming home to roost. The most stinking rancid racism is essential to this entire operation & unfortunately when chickens come home to roost, it is focused on the most vulnerable in US society: children in the Black, Latino, Native American, & immigrant communities.

Those who care about children have to stop uttering pieties about kids being the future & start opposing the assaults on education, health care, & housing in the US & start exposing the crimes of the US in Burkina Faso & elsewhere. Because children like Nuru aren’t just the future; they deserve a world suitable for them to live & love in.

(Photo of Nuru Haruna by Matjaz)