More follies of the privileged

Gwyneth Paltrow is going to live for seven days on the $29 per week budget of NYC families on food stamps. It’s part of a challenge from a celebrity chef on the NYC Food Bank board.

Putting aside how massively patronizing it is, our girl is probably happy as a clam. Given the anorexia & bulimia among celebrities, she’ll probably be doubling her normal food intake. KKKKaty Windsor is still on two biscuits a day until the baby comes; then she’s back to one biscuit. So she’d be smart to get one of those charities in London that she waves for to pull the same contest.

Woe is US politics!

The commentator, Bill Kristol, who isn’t smart enough to be compared to Mephistopheles, proposed Dick Cheney as “the most promising” GOP candidate for 2016. Cheney’s been run by remote control batteries for a long time now. He can’t go to the toilet without an aide pushing knobs.

But of course Kristol is looking at numb-nuts Cruz & Rubio (who opposes the 21st century & wants to stop it) & even a constipated evil robot looks good by comparison.

Jaafar Awad (22 yrs) Apr 14 2015Ziyad Awad (27 yrs) Apr 14 2015

Depending on their political agenda, media reported the death of Ziyad Awad quite differently. Awad was a 27-year-old Palestinian man shot & killed by Israeli soldiers on April 10th at the funeral of his cousin in the town of Beit Ummar near Hebron in the West Bank. Ma’an News Agency, a Palestinian network in Gaza & the West Bank, reported Awad was killed & 13 others injured “when soldiers opened fire on mourners at the funeral of Jaafar Awad.” Most reports followed the lead of Associated Press (AP) who claimed Awad was killed “in clashes with Israeli soldiers that erupted after a funeral.” CNN, whose source was primarily the Israeli military, said Awad was killed “allegedly by Israeli forces, during a riot that grew out of a West Bank funeral procession for his cousin.”

AP & CNN both claimed Palestinians initiated the confrontation by attacking soldiers with rocks, firebombs, & rolling burning tires. CNN quoted verbatim from the Israeli military that Palestinians were engaged in a “violent riot”; that soldiers “felt an immediate threat & responded with riot dispersal means” but the “rioters refused to halt & continued to endanger IDF soldiers.” Neither news agency thought to mention the Israeli army brutally occupies the area with full civil & military control but has no rights to be in the West Bank, let alone at a funeral for one of their victims, in any capacity at all.

Were Palestinians at the funeral of 22-year-old Jaafar Awad truculent & obstreperous toward Israeli soldiers? Probably & they damn well should have been. Jaafar was released in January after a 14-month Israeli prison term. Human rights groups report that Israeli prison torture of Palestinians is systematic & includes between 200 & 105 methods, many straight out of the CIA manual on torture. These barbarisms include “severe beatings, putting prisoners under cold water followed by hot water, cuffing or restraining them with their arms behind them & then tying them to a door or window for long periods of time, often lasting hours. Prisoners are also made to sit on chairs & beaten with sticks until they lose consciousness. These beatings may target sensitive areas of their bodies which have the potential to leave long-term negative effects, sometimes leading to chronic diseases.” Shades of Abu-Ghraib.

The town of Beit Ummar is being targeted by the Israeli military & in the first three months of 2015 alone, 60 Palestinians were hauled into the Israeli gulag, nearly half of them minors. Jaafar Awad was a victim of medical negligence & more likely malfeasance in prison. His health problems began when he was given an incorrect insulin shot in prison causing him neck inflammation, inability to speak, pain in the head, trembling, & impaired vision. He was a 22-year-old guy in the prime of life & by the time he was released (so he wouldn’t be another Palestinian who died in custody) he suffered from severe pneumonia, heart problems, thyroid & pancreas complications. Israeli authorities agreed to release him only after a special legal appeal & after payment of a fine of $10,200 (40,000 shekels). Released in critical condition, he died at a hospital not even three months later. Now if you were a Palestinian youth in the town of Beit Ummar, would you be inconsolable & irate!? We hope so.

Our deepest condolences to the families of Jaafar & Ziyad Awad. May they RIP after losing their lives in the struggle for Palestinian justice. And to honor them, may we continue to build the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS) & demand no aid of any kind to Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing.

(Photo on top is Jaafar Awad; on bottom is Ziyad Awad)

Build the economic and cultural boycott of Israel!

Israel is taking quite a beating from the economic & cultural boycott (BDS) against Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing. That’s why they pay performers exorbitant fees to break the boycott. Now many celebrities (including Madonna & the Kardashians) are reportedly looking at real estate in Tel Aviv–just 45 miles from Gaza in a city Israel claims is subject to Hamas rocket attacks.

Inquiring minds want to know if Israel bribed Kanye West & Kim Kardashian to get their daughter baptized in the Armenian church in Jerusalem since it’s a hell of a long way to go for a church rite when there are nearly forty Armenian churches right in Hollywood & the Los Angeles area.

Fiver feminist activists conditionally released in China

China has conditionally released five feminists arrested just prior to International Women’s Day for organizing a protest against sexual harassment on public transportation. They were activists in campaigns against sexual harassment, domestic violence, LGBT rights, disability rights, & employment discrimination & were hauled in without charge on suspicion of “picking quarrels & provoking trouble.”

Conditional release means they can still be charged with something or even disappeared because there is a general crackdown on Chinese democracy & human rights activists. Dissent has been growing a long time in China & is widespread, including around the environment & labor issues. New battalions enter humanity’s historic struggle against neoliberal capitalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

Five Chinese feminists conditionally released from detention

Five Chinese feminists - Apr 9 2015

China has conditionally released five feminists arrested just prior to International Women’s Day for organizing a protest against sexual harassment on public transportation. They were activists in campaigns against sexual harassment, domestic violence, LGBT rights, disability rights, & employment discrimination & were hauled in without charge on suspicion of “picking quarrels & provoking trouble.”

Conditional release means they can still be charged with something or even disappeared because there is a general crackdown on Chinese democracy & human rights activists. Dissent has been growing a long time in China & is widespread, including around the environment & labor issues. New battalions enter humanity’s historic struggle against neoliberal capitalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

The child trash collectors of Kabul

Afghanistan child garbage picker (Wakil Kohsar:AFP:Getty Images) Apr 13 2015

The media caption to this photo read: “A young rubbish collector works at a dump site” in Kabul, Afghanistan. In fact, he’s a kid, a young boy & he’s not a scavenger looking for recyclables but a rubbish collector for the city.

What the caption editor should have said is: “This is emancipation US-style. Child labor has increased under the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan & now tens of thousands of kids as young as six work under dangerous conditions in coal mines, brick factories, construction, carpet weaving, begging, & in toxic dump sites.”

But the plot sickens from there. After 30 years of constant war & occupation, Afghanistan’s infrastructure was in ruins & one of the most pressing problems was solid waste management. From the US-NATO occupation in 2001 to 2004, Kabul, the largest city in Afghanistan, had grown from one million to four million people. The UN reported the growth as returning refugees & “new urban dwellers.” “New urban dwellers” must be a coy way of saying those thousands of rural Afghans fleeing US-NATO bombing in the countryside as well as the armies of NGO & military personnel swarming like predatory locusts into the country.

UN-Habitat, the agency dealing with urban development, boasted they handed a grant of over $840,000 from the World Bank to the municipality of Kabul to develop a waste management program. They claimed the program cleared mountains of accumulated waste from dump sites around the city. USAID also reported funding a waste management program for the municipality including logistical assistance–first in 2004 to 2007 & again in 2010 to 2013. Now this is quite disturbing because it suggests (actually it confirms what we already knew) that the US as well as the UN & World Bank are aware children are employed in a dangerous occupation where they are susceptible to disease, not to mention vermin.

The more we know about the war in Afghanistan, the more we understand it must be actively opposed.

US out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!

(Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

We need a political critique of Hillary Clinton; enough with the gossip!

According to the NY Times, Clinton has announced her candidacy for president. I am constantly surprised at the banality, often laden with a sneering subtle misogyny, that passes for political criticism of Clinton. A few radicals have made a cottage industry of Clinton-criticism which never really rises above the level of gossip & insinuation. In place of hard-hitting expose, we get nitpicking politics.

Since I’ll be running against her, I will be writing a critique that won’t include sneering. Her role as shill-in-chief for US militarism is damning enough but what needs to be exposed is how she used that post for undermining human rights especially when it served personal enrichment. What she & that shabby-assed husband of hers did in Haiti deserves an entire book of condemnations. And what she continues to do to co-opt & turn women’s rights into an elite pastime deserves another book.

It isn’t good enough that she’s a woman. But then I’m still not convinced she stands a snow ball’s chance in hell because the smell of corruption & venality is written all over her resume.

The Coachella Music Festival and migrant workers in California

Richard Lui:The Desert Sun) Apr 12 2015 (

Few things show the disparities of wealth in the US so starkly as the annual Coachella Music Festival in Southern California where celebrities mix with the well-heeled to hear top performers over two weekends. Tickets go from over $400 to over $5,000. Last year, the gate grossed $78 million from 579,000 attendants over six days. But just miles away is an agribusiness area where migrant farm workers live in squalid, sub-human conditions without sanitation or electricity.
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Reposted from 2012:

This weekend, thousands of music fans converge in Indio, CA (near Palm Springs in the Coachella Valley) for the annual Coachella Music Festival, considered one of the world’s premiere music festivals. The western part of Coachella Valley–now one of the fastest growing areas in the country–has been a resort haven for millionaire movie stars & retired presidents since the 1920s & a haven for retired northerners (“snowbirds”) during the winter months.

Only 25 miles away, Eastern Coachella Valley is an agricultural area drawing 15,000 migrant farm workers during the growing season. Because no housing is provided for migrant workers, homelessness is a major problem with most forced to live out of their cars, on the streets, or in makeshift housing. Hundreds of illegal, unregulated trailer parks built on the cheap provide squalid housing for permanent residents & some migrants. Built on county lands (called unincorporated communities), these trailer parks lack sewage systems, clean drinking water, storm drains, trash pickup, & even power. As a result, residents are plagued by contaminated water & raw sewage backing up in the shower, overflowing in the streets every time it rains, sitting in stagnant pools in their yards. Children play in this raw sewage with rat, mosquito, & cockroach infestations.

Residents attempt to treat these problems which the state ignores by flushing sewage into septic tanks & cesspools (which overflow regularly), by pouring bleach into sewage pools, by digging private sewage pits, but suffer from many public health problems including gastrointestinal illness, respiratory disease, skin infections, & other health problems in an area not served by public health facilities. This racist neglect by the state also means dozens of crops sold around the country are grown in surrounding fields fertilized by untreated sewage.

Certainly the most disgusting of all the environmental outrages in the area is what has been termed “Mt. San Diego”, a 50-foot high pile of human poop dumped by San Diego on nearby Indian tribal land from 1989 until 1994, when a federal court ordered an end to the racist practice. Particulates from the massive heap of feces are dispersed by desert winds to the dozens of communities just a few miles away & emit a noxious stench impossible to shut out.

Although the labor of migrant workers generates the enormous agricultural wealth of California, their conditions of life have been in this bereft & squalid state for generations, existing right next door to lavish wealth. In Coachella Valley, one has to drive through upscale golf courses where celebrity tournaments are played to get to these impoverished hell holes where mostly Latino Californians & migrant workers live. If the stench was near enough to affect the golf games, that pile of human manure would be removed forthwith by the state.

(Photo of Coachella 2015 by Richard Lui/The Desert Sun)