Have been so content lately not having to fend off antisemitic posts about the illuminati & Rothschilds. I actually thought I was weeding them out & sending them packing. Then today I was tagged on Facebook in a video by Henry Makow, a Canadian libertarian who campaigns against Zionism (for antisemitic reasons), freemasons, homosexuality, the New World Order, Satanism, aliens, & feminism. Makow believes the ruling elite have been taken over by a cabal of all of these. Shades of David Icke’s reptilian overlords & it goes without saying, just as whacked.

When I checked the tagger’s wall I found that article circulating from Haaretz about Israeli scientists discovering a gene that predisposes Ashkenazi Jews to schizophrenia. To my mind, genetic research is a deeply flawed, probably mostly pseudo-science. The researchers at Hebrew University in Jerusalem studied Ashkenazi Jews from Israel where mental health problems could just as well be related to the political psychosis of Zionism & militarism. And we know (at least those of us influenced by natural modalities like Chinese medicine & homeopathy) that emotional & intellectual habits have profound affects on human physiology.

The Haaretz article circulates to demonstrate a tendency toward mental illness among Ashkenazi & I would consider that not just an apolitical approach to Zionism but the very essence of antisemitism. If in fact they’re genetically prone to mental illness, that is deeply regrettable & not something to be flaunted. They are after all human beings.

The answer to Zionism is not vilifying & goof-ball conspiracy theories complete with devils & reptiles. It is in building the economic & cultural boycott of Israel to create possibilities for a democratic secular state suitable for both Jews & Palestinians to live in.

The state of Israel is an illegal construct (no matter how many UN resolutions attempt to legitimize it) & the Israeli people an invented people comprised of dozens of other nationalities. So political & religious traditions need to be manufactured for social cohesion & war propaganda.

Last Wednesday they celebrated the “Day of Remembrance for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel & Victims of Terrorism” (an ancient tradition by Israeli standards going back to 1963) & Thursday they celebrated Independence Day (a historic tradition going back to 1948 when Zionist paramilitary squads using terrorism & massacres thought they had decisively routed tens of thousands of indigenous Palestinians).

Since its inception as an illegitimate state, the high-flown rhetoric on “Independence Day” is a study in propaganda. In 1948, David Ben-Gurion (the Polish terrorist, Zionist leader, leading architect of Zionist aggression against Palestinians, founder of the Israeli state & military, & first prime minister) said: “A people which had been exiled from its homeland two thousand years before…was returning home as sovereign citizens in their own independent state.”

Ben-Gurion was a great champion of the Bible. We don’t know if he was a religious guy but he fully grasped the utility of a theocracy in Israel–especially for appeals to the Torah as a land grand from Yahweh. In the 1950s he said “I will never agree to the separation of religion from the State. I want the State to hold religion in the palm of its hand.” A real man of the Enlightenment! And the US which bankrolls this theocratic state is mobilizing against Islamic states!?

He was also a champion of “Hebrew culture” which existed only as German, Polish, US, Ukrainian, etc. Jewish culture & not as a universal culture. Israel had to create an Israeli culture because they are an invented people without a common culture & no history in Palestine that has any meaning except in the Bible & fevered Zionist imaginations.

Recent demographic studies of Israel indicate that a majority are not religious so it isn’t Judaism holding them together anymore. It’s the right-wing nationalism of Zionism along with evocations of past pogroms, persecutions, & the WWII holocaust. Only someone steeped in social hatred of Jews would minimize or trivialize the trauma of centuries of persecution. But Zionism is a rejection of the broader struggle against racism & colonialism involving millions of black & brown peoples across the planet; it is instead an attempt to cash in on the gestalt of colonialism.

Zionism isn’t working out as a social vision since after 67 years Israel, even backed by the US & Europe, is an armed military fortress with almost universal conscription. This little boy from a West Bank Zionist settlement is celebrating “Independence Day” playing soldier at a weapons display with the Israeli military. He’s practicing how to dehumanize & shoot Palestinians fighting against Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing. Raising small children in social hatred for Palestinians stands as the singular indictment of Zionism.

Build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel to tear down this fortress & replace it with a democratic secular state where Jews & Palestinians can stand united against racism & colonialism & live in peace as brothers & sisters. That’s the only social vision with a future.

(Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

We aren’t told anything about this African immigrant, now identified as #84. It’s not certain we can even imagine what he’s just been through–from feeling compelled to leave family & town, the arduous trek to the Mediterranean coast, wrangling to find passage across the sea, & then surviving drowning. His very poignant face gives some insight into his trauma, fear, & griefs. Though not to his dreams & possibilities.

It isn’t clear what came out of the European Union summit on Thursday (vagueness serves criminality) except proposals for “surgical military strikes” to capture & destroy boats before they’re used by traffickers. Wow isn’t it a relief to know they won’t be bombing dinghies on the open sea when they’re jam-packed with men, women, & children!?

It’s also reported that Frontex, the EU naval goon squad, will send ships further into the Mediterranean to address the crisis. They now patrol within 30 miles of the European coast. Will they be sending ships 50 miles out or 100 miles out or just to Lampedusa? Because it’s over 200 miles to Libya from Sicily & that’s a lot of sea to drown in. Will they be leasing a lot more boats or wing it with a few patrol boats?

The EU mocks our intelligence when they promise to seek long-term solutions to the poverty & war in the Middle East & Africa compelling such massive immigration. What are they going to do? Pull out the multinational mining corporations? Stop sending private mercenaries to protect their investments? Close down their agribusiness plantations? Stop funding Israel, Egypt, paramilitary terrorists? Stop stealing national resources? Yank the IMF & World Bank out of the continent by their short hairs? Yeah, right!

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) criticized the EU for declaring war on traffickers like they did Somali “pirates” instead of allocating resources to search & rescue. They pointed out the obvious that it will not stop immigration but only change the routes to possibly more dangerous ones.

It’s not that the EU officials are too stupid to recognize all that but that they are conscienceless, amoral people administering a predatory system. Nothing speaks more powerfully to the need to sink the EU than their callous & criminal indifference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people displaced by plunder.

This man, who has a name, is disembarked from an Italian coast guard ship in Sicily. He will be processed as #84 & likely deported back to where he came from.

Immigration is a human right! Open the damn borders!

(Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/AP)

Many people get bent out of shape about Black teens wearing their jeans low on their butts. Mini skirts & cleavage don’t distress them but seeing a kid’s BVDs send school boards & city officials into paroxysms of indignation. There are all sorts of school & municipal ordinances banning them. Parents don’t have to like the practice & can wrangle with their kids but that’s a very different issue from legal bans.

So let’s be frank. It’s a civil rights issue & very likely an act of defiance on the part of kids who are sick of being targeted. Black kids should be able to wear their jeans as low as they want because there’s no public indecency involved at all; they’re not exposing their butts. The ordinances are only a means of legal harassment & are part of the war on Black youth.

To show where this kind of crap leads, a newly released video of a November 2013 incident in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana shows Erwin Edwards, a 38-year-old Black man arrested for wearing sagging pants (which are banned in the city), was tasered to death by six cops in a holding cell. The coroner ruled the cause of death as “undetermined” & a result of “acute cocaine & phencyclidine (PCP) intoxication in association with restraint by law enforcement.”

A police department review of the incident found no criminal wrongdoing but the video testifies otherwise. The sheriff’s office has turned over the findings to the US Department of Justice which has already let the murderers of Michael Brown & Trayvon Martin get off scot-free.

This is a video of the assault so you can judge for yourself if there was any criminal wrongdoing. May Mr. Edwards RIP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDsYC1UQpfI

Let’s hear a thunderous chorus of “Je suis Charlie” now. Let’s see if every one of the asses who farted about free speech to have a go at Muslims will utter a peep of outrage over this monstrous racism. Let’s see if pedants will chide us now for missing the point & being thick about satire.

If we are restrained by mercy from having a lynching party, why not instead a thunderous chorus of denunciations for the politicians who gathered for free speech (my ass!) in Paris last January & are now refusing entry to hundreds of thousands of immigrants? Those immigrants are our brothers & sisters & we take their drownings as seriously as we take our own families. The monsters who can work up a laugh should be shunned & vilified for pandering to the most backward violent forces in modern times.

“Je suis Charlie,” my ass! Je suis African, Syrian, Eritrean, Palestinian, Afghan, Iraqi!

(Photo is April 22 2015 cover of Charlie Hebdo)

Many people attempt to refute Zionism by historical references to Ashkenazi Jews. I don’t consider that a useful contribution to the discussion & think it skirts, if not often reflects, antisemitism. What matters is the Israeli Law of Return allowing Jews from anywhere in the world to claim citizenship & denying Palestinians their indigenous rights.

If someone identifies as Jewish & claims Israeli citizenship, that is a political problem–whether they be Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, or one of the phony lost tribes of Israel being discovered by Christian evangelists in places like India & Peru.

Tens of thousands of unionized workers marched across South Korea yesterday & are regrouping to continue protests today. Media reports are vague about the issues but they appear to be the same issues igniting protests across the globe: the government is modifying labor laws to make it easier to fire people & is cutting back pensions. Protesters are also demanding an increase in the minimum hourly wage from 5,580 won (US $5.18) to 10,000 won ($9.10).

The proposed pension cutbacks would affect government workers as well as workers in the chaebol which are business conglomerates unique to South Korea. Chaebol were formed in the 1960s under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee who was an ally of the US. They are immense monopolies owned, controlled, & managed by family dynasties. They are integral to the functioning of the government & to the massive repression of worker’s rights. They aren’t just corporate conglomerates but in many ways pioneered neoliberal business strategies including sweatshops & export-oriented markets. In most countries the ruling elite hide behind minions who run their corporations but in South Korea oligarchic rule is more direct. Samsung, Hyundai, & LG Group are among the biggest & most important chaebol.

Chaebol under the military dictatorship are attributed with transforming the South Korean economy from agrarian to industrial, to an export economy, & raising the standard of living. Economic indices seem to bear that out except that they’re mostly cheat sheets for capitalists & only if sweatshops are considered a measure of economic well-being. There have been repeated farmer protests in South Korea over export of their produce & the flooding of markets with US products. South Korea has free trade agreements with the US, European Union, Canada, Australia, China. Those are sweatshop agreements.

A more telling index is the over a million homeless people just in Seoul & reportedly islands where the disabled, unemployed, & homeless are forced to work as slaves. The most telling index is that South Korean unions long-compromised with the autocratic regime feel compelled to mobilize their ranks against the latest assaults on workers’ rights.

Our fullest solidarity with the working people of South Korea.
(Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA)

In the annals of idiocy three NY Times writers stand out. And not just for idiocy but for perfidy & stinking rotten politics. They bring groveling before power to new heights of debasement: David Brooks (also known as mumble-mouth), Thomas Friedman, & Nicholas Kristof. There’s little reason to do an exegesis of their ideas. If it’s too stupid to think, they write it like gospel truth.

(This post should be amended to add Jodi Rudoren & Roger Cohen)

Nightly news is reporting Angelina Jolie’s appearance today at the UN war-mongering against Syria. Is this what US diplomacy has come to? Why don’t we ask Kanye West & Kim Kardashian, two of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2015, what they think about Syria?