Zionist publications are not without their sarcasms–at least of the unintentional kind. Ynetnews, an online Israeli publication, announced that while hairdressers from Jordan & Turkey boycotted the international hairstyling competition in Tel Aviv, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank walked away with the championship for “everyday hairdo styling.” They reported “remarkable cooperation has been recorded between Israelis & Palestinians in the field of hair design.”

She won a pair of expensive scissors & Israel thinks it dealt a blow to Intifada. But no one dares to show a photo of the do. This must be the Israeli version of the nail salon in downtown Kabul that justifies the US-NATO war.

So while Zionists in the US organized a busload to get their pictures taken in Baltimore with Black civil rights activists in a dog & pony show of solidarity, cops in Tel Aviv were assaulting Israelis who came to protest with the Ethiopian community against racist discrimination & police brutality.

Zionist ideology in its formation during the 19th century rejected the broader struggle against racism & colonialism & instead cashed in politically by calling for a Jewish-only state in Palestine. Racism & elitism are inherent to Zionism, not an aberration.

Will the Zionist groups that organized the dog & pony show in Baltimore denounce the racist violence in Tel Aviv? Or will they claim Ethiopians used their children as human shields?

(Photo by Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

This photo of Rabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro with Baltimore activists is making media rounds today, including an article in Haaretz. They’re celebrating the decision to charge six cops for the murder of Freddie Gray at a May 1st rally.

The Haaretz article reported that fourteen rabbis from the Baltimore & Washington, DC areas joined the protest for “police reform & justice for Freddie Gray” along with “dozens” from Jews United for Justice (JUFJ), a community organization. The Baltimore director of JUFJ issued a statement saying “Jews United for Justice & the Jewish community stand with our neighbors in Baltimore calling for justice for Freddie Gray.”

Historically, Jewish activists have played a central role in social struggle–from building the trade unions to civil rights & women’s rights & every other social struggle–along with the important role they have always played in educating about the character of Zionism & in Palestinian solidarity. But the rancid ideology of Zionism has soured things considerably & put many Jewish activists on a collision course with justice.

There isn’t much known about the politics of Jews United for Justice except that it appears to be fairly new & is funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. That is what you call a red alert. The Jewish Federation is a confederation, not just of Jewish community groups, but is the leading player in the Zionist movement promoting Israel in the US. It works closely with AIPAC & the State of Israel.

This is what you call a photo op, a propaganda piece, a planted article. When you vet Rabbi Shapiro (easy to do on his FB wall), you find he is a Zionist & supporter of AIPAC. It must have alarmed the hell out of the Zionist establishment when Ferguson activists & Palestinians in Gaza forged bonds of solidarity after Operation Ethnic Cleansing last year in Gaza & the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson. This kind of hail-fellow-well-met politics is nothing but media spectacle intended to persuade the Black community that Zionism is on their side. My ass, it is! Zionism, in its foundations, rejected the broader struggle against racism & colonialism. It has no affinity with civil rights.

It’s entirely conceivable the good rabbi is sincere in his defense of civil rights. So it would be good to know what he thinks about racist discrimination & police brutality against the Ethiopian community in Tel Aviv, where they are protesting police assaults & chanting “Not black, not white, we’re all human beings.” Will Israel be given a special dispensation for their racist assaults on Ethiopians as they are for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians? Or will the good rabbi (who lived in Israel & knows the score about apartheid) speak out against racist violence?

Build the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel to answer this fraudulent campaign to legitimize apartheid in Israel.

(Photo by David Goldman/AP)

Bernie Sanders is only 72 hours into his presidential campaign & already he’s drooling all over himself about Israel when queried at a town hall meeting. Progressives can tell themselves he’s good on so many questions that he has to be allowed a peccadillo or two. He actually stinks on most questions except rhetorically. In words he’s a real firebrand. Otherwise he’s kind of sorry-assed.

But saying Israeli ethnic cleansing in Gaza is an “overreaction” to Hamas aggression is not a peccadillo. The struggle of Palestinians is of historic moment. To misjudge apartheid & be dismissive of ethnic cleansing is to stand with terrorism & oppression & it puts our man on the wrong side of history. He’s an impediment, not a step forward.

Jill Stein is not a whole lot better on Israel & needs to be interrogated, not applauded just because she has some progressive views.

Demanding candidates straighten up & fly right on Palestine is not a fetishistic preoccupation. It’s a touchstone for where they stand on justice.

Did David Rockefeller actually survive six heart & two kidney transplants like World News Daily is reporting? I only ask because the photos make him look embalmed in formaldehyde more than surviving–& because the newspaper reporting it also claims the KGB, the spy agency of the former Soviet Union, created the punk scene.

The story is they bankrolled bands like the Sex Pistols as part of a covert operation to create cultural & political chaos, nihilism & cynicism toward authorities, promote drug use, & pervert “Western youth.” Who knew KGB agents were such party animals?

If it’s true, what a shame. All those rubles wasted when capitalism was doing well enough alone. No help needed.

Inquiring minds want to know.

(Photo is David Rockefeller. Dead or alive?)

What, no clamor for my views on KKKKaty’s new KKKKid!? Well I’ll give them anyway.

The birth of a child is always a blessed event & we wish the new Windsor no ill. Being born into a mutant inbred clan is burden enough for any child. But don’t expect festivities or anything else but a call to overthrow feudalism before she comes of child-bearing age.

The unseemly feudal display outside the hospital is enough to make a republican cry. A Town Crier in 2015? Crowds numbering over 50 outside the gates of Buckingham Palace? Monarchists camped out for days at the hospital wrapped in the Union Jack & one grown man with a baby pacifier (dummy in British) in his mouth? Betty actually flashing a toothy grin? (Or had she just finished counting her gold bullion?) Throngs of international media when thousands of babies are born every day?

Most appropriate of all are the bookies taking odds on the KKKKid’s name. Sentimental fools are hoping for “Diana.” Who cares what they name her when you have to call her by a feudal title?

What they’re doing in England is bad enough. But if you want to see unseemly, check out US television. The announcers coo over royalty like the US War of Independence never happened. Australia actually reintroduced royal titles; Canada still acts like a colony & politicians grovel when the moochocracy visits; Irish Republicans like Gerry Adams & Martin McGuinness make jackasses of themselves by scraping & bowing to Betty Windsor like she actually was a queen. Simple-minded groveling has been replaced by crawling on your belly like a reptile.

So we do wish the KKKKid well but not a whit more than every other child born. And we wish the speediest destruction of feudalism–a medieval monstrosity if there ever was one.

(Photo of the Town Crier outside the hospital by Geoff Pugh)

The reality today is that this photo could be from any number of places: Syria, Gaza, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq. In fact, it’s from Sana’a, Yemen where we watch the magnificent Yemen uprising in 2011 now being bombed to smithereens. Repression will follow the bombing.

The small boy is digging through the rubble of houses destroyed by days of bombing by warplanes from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, & the United Arab Emirates, with “logistical support” from Somalia, Pakistan, & the US. Somalia doesn’t even have an independent, functioning government after years of US bombing & military intervention. So who in Somalia declared war against Yemen?

What does George Clooney have to say about Sudan joining the “Bombing for Democracy” coalition after all his war-mongering about Sudan’s genocide in Darfur? Don’t Mia Farrow & that creepy little Ronan Farrow have anything to say about Sudan being accepted in a respectable bombing mission?

Seven feudal kleptocrats & a military dictatorship bombing democracy into Yemen. Even Hollywood couldn’t sell that script. According to the media caption, the coalition of belligerent nations are “mostly Sunni Arab countries”–as if religion had a damn thing to do with it or they had a clue what the difference between Sunni & Shi’a is in theology or politics.

The military aggression against Yemen has nothing to do with democracy & everything to do with destroying the last vestiges of social rebellion seen in the 2011 uprising. So what does Tawakkol Karman, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner from Yemen, have to say about the bombing? After receiving the honorific, she reportedly worked tirelessly lobbying the UN & US for a democratic transition in Yemen. Was all that for naught? The US is providing what they euphemistically call “logistical support” (really direct involvement) & the UN is doing its usual: wringing its hands about the number of civilian deaths from bombing densely populated areas, “raising concerns about compliance with international law,” warning timidly about possible war crimes, but refusing to denounce the bombing of Yemen. None of that is Karman’s fault of course but it would be valuable to know where she stands.

US out of Yemen! No support of any kind to aggression against the people of Yemen!

(Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP)

Donald Rumsfeld, an official in several US regimes & a war criminal, was interviewed on a program about US opposition to the draft. Many claim protests are a waste of time & have no affect on those in power. But according to Rumsfeld, Lyndon Johnson was often unable to leave the White House during protests because it was surrounded & that it was “ugly & difficult” to hear protesters chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

Antiwar opposition eventually drove LBJ out of office. But not before he made a draft call for 48,000 soldiers. Nixon wanted to end the draft to cut the antiwar movement off at the knees & it was effectively ended in 1973. But in 1980, that born-again champion of the people Jimmy Carter, made it compulsory for all males to register with the Selective Service System. Rumsfeld said he couldn’t foresee in his lifetime (which has already gone on too long) that it would be restored because they judged massive antiwar opposition was very much linked to conscription.

Robbie Williams, singer & UNICEF ambassador, ignored months of appeals to comply with the cultural boycott of Israel & performed today in Tel Aviv. Turns out his manager is a UNICEF official so playing jester to apartheid advanced his personal interests.

Now we can feel free to speak the truth about his music. England has some explaining to do for making this guy famous. His genre has still not been defined but it’s somewhere between Raucous & Rubbish. In rock & roll, performers compete with costumes to outdo each other in outrage. Even here Williams is no rebel & dresses like Gene Simmons & KISS. Why? When the original is so cheesy?

They say the lyrics to his most famous song “Let Me Entertain You” are mostly innuendoes & double entendre. That’s another thing England will have to explain. The eroticism eludes the libido’s perception.

When we read he performed for Betty Windsor at her Diamond Jubilee concert in 2012 we should have seen it coming like a Mack truck & maybe saved our breath. Any rock & roller who wears the jester’s outfit for the moochocracy is all washed up as a rebel. As his ugly-assed song “Let Me Entertain You” drools, “I’m a burning effigy of everything I used to be.” He’s got that right.

The reviewer for Haaretz thought the concert today stunk. He said It was “two notches below that of Justin Timberlake at the same venue.” Ouch! He also complained about seeing too much of William’s armpits. Really!? And we thought he was all ass.

(Photo is the regrettable effigy)