One wishes the UN commission that reported on Israel’s Operation Ethnic Cleansing (Protective Edge) last summer was just inept & politically stupid instead of dishonest & malignant. Then the members could walk away from the report with some of their dignity still intact. Apparently they don’t realize that photojournalism combined with social media to alter the quotient of propaganda to truth & you can no longer fool all the people all the time. The boycott of Israel called by Palestinians & the massive international solidarity movement have entered history on the side of Palestinians & the truth is out.

Palestinians are expected to be grateful for the empty gesture–like Pope Francis saying a Hail Mary at the apartheid wall & the UN & European parliaments passing resolutions endorsing Palestinian bantustates–called “Palestinian statehood.” So when the UN acknowledges in the report what the entire world witnessed, that which is irrefutable, Palestinians & their supporters are supposed to herald it as a step forward, a partial victory, a big deal for justice. How about calling a spade a spade & telling the UN to stick their report where the sun don’t shine?

Let’s just take a look at methodology: the commission admits Israel denied them access to Gaza for inspection or to personally interview Palestinians who endured 51 days of carpet bombing. Interviewing of selected people was done by Skype. There were a lot of charges made by Israel to justify bombing schools, refugee centers, hospitals, mosques, entire residential areas. So wouldn’t on-site inspection be essential? If they don’t want to take the word of Palestinians, did they at least interview the Israeli soldier & veteran group named Breaking the Silence who published extensive testimony about the Israeli military’s indifference to human life & property in Gaza?

Operation Ethnic Cleansing was not addressed within the context of the Israeli blockade of Gaza or occupation of the West Bank & East Jerusalem. Any commission with an ounce of integrity would consider the blockade to be of the very essence of the Israeli siege & not just an irrelevant by the by. But integrity is the very thing this report lacks.

The fatal flaw of this piece of rubbish/propaganda however is the sleazy attempt to efface distinctions between Israeli ethnic cleansing & superior military power & that of paramilitary outfits in Gaza, like Hamas. Under the heading of “Rocket & mortar attacks” from Gaza, the report states “Between 7 July & 26 August 2014, Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets & 1,753 mortars towards Israel, killing six civilians & injuring as many as 1,600 people, including 270 children.” How does the commission explain the discrepancy between those figures & other UN reports that 66 Israeli soldiers were killed & three civilians, including one child, with no mention of injuries? And how many of those rockets & mortars actually got past the Israeli Iron Dome system & landed in Israel? Because if the Iron Dome isn’t working, then the Pentagon ought to stop bankrolling it.

In the heading “Tunnels,” the report says the Israeli military found 32 tunnels, 14 of which extended beyond the apartheid barrier around Gaza into Israel. This caused “great anxiety” among Israelis, the commission said, for fear Palestinian commandoes meant them harm. Can the UN suggest other means for Palestinians to defend themselves against the blockade & after repeated aerial bombardments by Israel? Can the UN even confirm the existence of all those tunnels–or are they taking Israel’s word on it? Presumably those tunnels didn’t extend into the hills of Sderot, Israel where residents exhibited no anxiety at all but gathered in easy chairs to wave Israeli flags & cheer on ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Enough with the half-measures & empty gestures when it comes to Palestinian justice. Enough with the rubbish/propaganda that passes for investigation. It’s of interest that five countries abstained on the vote (India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Paraguay, Macedonia) & only the US voted no. So many questions are raised by that vote. How can anyone who supports Palestinians also support Obama? How can anyone who supports justice support Modi?

(Photo of Gaza which is proof of war crimes was taken August 27, 2014 by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

There is probably no living figure in world politics more loathsome, contemptible, ruthless, amoral, criminal than this lowlife. He’s ugly all the way to the bone & comparisons to repugnant animals are only unfair to the animals. His political history is nothing but killing fields on every continent.

Those who associate with him & pay homage to his leadership, including Obama & Hillary Clinton, tell you everything you need to know about their real view of politics: realpolitik in the coercive, amoral, Machiavellian sense. Now Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, just met with Kissinger in NYC & called him a “fantastic person, with a grand global vision.” She also met with Rupert Murdoch & a number of bankers & CEOs, likely shilling for more neoliberal investment in Brazil.

When millions of people protested in 2013 against austerity in Brazil, including thousands of Indigenous peoples fighting back against multinational land grabs, when riot police brutally occupied favelas, leftist activists of the Stalinist tradition circulated slanderous accusations that the movement was led by fascists. And when protests erupted again recently, publications like NACLA published articles claiming protestors were the well-heeled rebelling against her reforms. Many activists who don’t follow politics in Brazil, even around the World Cup & Olympics games, bought that crap; & more were confused.

Perhaps the next time they vilify popular movements of rebellion against neoliberal austerity, land grabs, environmental disaster, usurpations of Indigenous rights, people will ask more probing questions & not be taken in by political piss-heads with an agenda of conforming to the status quo & groveling for every double-talking politician that comes down the pike.

This isn’t the first time social movements have been slandered in that way. A similar thing happened during the Hong Kong democracy movement last year & the Syrian revolution against Assad’s tyranny was vilified.

Rousseff has exposed her hand in a way that cannot be denied. But be certain, there are those that will try.

(Photo of the creep by Pascal Lauener/Reuters)

Media is really working that ISIS thing–especially with the 4th of July coming up. Police departments have sophisticated equipment to distinguish between firecrackers & bombs when any teenager could tell them. Network news brought on terrorism experts to declare the world on high security alert. They expect “ISIS-inspired gunmen” to show up at US embassies, on beaches, in 4th of July parades & picnics. And of course as we know from TV, they’ll be wearing hijabs or carrying a Quran or saying something in Arabic. Be afraid. Be very afraid. And then turn the damn TV off.

There are a few explanations offered for why Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen. One says it’s so the Sunni Saudi regime can stop Shia Iran’s regional influence. That narrative claims Iran is backing Yemen’s Houthi rebels in their conflict with Saudi-supported president Hadi. Others claim Iran’s connections to the Houthi are marginal & that the Saudi feudal monarch has domestic reasons for waging war–including placating rivalries within the ruling family in a power & succession struggle favoring one of his sons. Other explanations bring in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (the Pentagon’s favorite boogiemen), ISIS, & even tribal secessionists in Yemen. Too much of this kind of analysis rots the brain.

Saudi Arabia is a bastion of reaction in the Middle East, playing a collaborating role in neoliberal domination of the region. It was vital to the US in the two Iraq Wars & it remains vital to US & European economic, political, & military control–along with the Bahraini monarchy, Egyptian military junta, & Israeli colonial regime in reversing & destroying the massive Arab movements for democracy. Those reactionary regimes are US-European allies because neoliberal interests accord with their own: feudalism, sweatshop capitalism, & denial of all democracy.

The US & its allies in the Middle East are turning the region into a killing field–from Syria to Gaza to Yemen to the streets of Egypt. This man is searching for survivors in the rubble of a home destroyed by Saudi bombing in Sanaa, Yemen. We have witnessed this same carnage over & over again because war & bombing is the only way barbarism can impose its control.

Rebuilding the international antiwar movement & demanding the end of bombing, occupation, tyranny is the only way forward for humanity. It’s not a mission we can afford to blunder.

(Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP)

This photo is the apartheid wall at Qalandia, a village in the occupied West Bank near but not bordering Jerusalem. There is a large refugee camp built there in 1949 for Palestinians driven from their lands & homes by Zionist paramilitary squads. According to one UN statistic, over 10,000 people still live there.

The main Israeli military checkpoint for entering Jerusalem is at Qalandia & because it is such a nightmare of pedestrian & vehicular traffic, rubbish, & hassles from border guards, it is the scene of frequent Palestinian protests & altercations between frustrated Palestinians & aggressive border patrol. Today Mohammad Kosba, a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager was shot & killed by Israeli soldiers allegedly for throwing rocks at an Israeli military vehicle & denting it. There have reportedly been several violent altercations since Ramadan began which media has not reported–except those few instances where a Palestinian was the alleged perpetrator.

To cross, Israel requires Palestinians to have permits for work, medical care, education, or religious reasons. They abridged religious permits due to closing down Al-Aqsa mosque to males under 50 years old which is why there are many photos of young Palestinians queued up to scale ladders to cross the wall for prayers in the public streets surrounding Al-Aqsa. Israel took advantage of recent altercations to revoke permits for Palestinians living in the West Bank to visit family in Gaza & even further limit access to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Scaling the apartheid wall isn’t possible for elderly or infirm Palestinian men. These men are making their way to Al-Aqsa along the apartheid wall near Qalandia village.

Support religious freedom for Palestinians in occupied West Bank & build BDS, the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel.

(Photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA)

Let me play Nostradamus for a moment: Donald Trump will soon announce his withdrawal from the presidential race due to a brain-eating amoeba that caused him to say stupid, racist, xenophobic things about Mexicans. He hopes thereby to salvage what little street cred he has left among other halfwits.

But his empire tumbles around his dumb ass. After Univision & NBC dumped him, his misogynist pageants, & the Celebrity Apprentice, Macy’s (where he sells a line of vulgar & flashy men’s clothing & jewelry) & Serta also dumped him. Costa Rica, Mexico, & Bogota pulled out of the Miss Universe pageant; performers & the two cohosts pulled out of the July 12th Miss USA pageant.

Adios amigo! Don’t let the door hit your dumb ass on the way out. And wipe that smug look off your face.

Researchers at the University of Vermont conclude that those with blue eyes are more prone to alcoholism. So glad they cleared that up. We won’t ask why they were looking at such an inane connection but we would like to ask, “Now what?” Or should the question be “So what?”

The feudal trappings & homage given to some religious figures don’t appeal to me but they’re not of concern to me. When they start talking politics, that does interest me. Like when Pope Francis remains silent on ethnic cleansing in Gaza while schmoozing with the Israeli president. Or when the Dalai Lama talks about compassion & love for humanity & then pays tribute & hangs out with George W. Bush, the man who lied the US into the Iraq War.

On two occasions now–once in a 2012 interview with Piers Morgan & yesterday at the G.W. Bush presidential center in Dallas, TX–the Dalai Lama expressed personal love for Bush but only “reservations” about his barbaric & murderous war against Iraq.

It was a regular little love-fest yesterday between the Dalai Lama & Bush–a man most of humanity wants prosecuted for the hell he created for the Iraqi people. It’s a slippery slope the Dalai Lama is on: do we personally love Hitler, Stalin, Omar Suleiman (the torturer), Pinochet, Netanyahu, Kissinger, Mubarak, Sisi, et al, & just have “reservations” about their unspeakable crimes? Does criminality on such a scale mean nothing?

So it turns out Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief leading the austerity campaign against Greek working people (targeting pensions in particular), doesn’t pay taxes on her annual salary of $467,940 (£298,675) plus $83,760 additional allowance a year. Her benefits include rent subsidies, dependency allowances for spouses & children, education grants for school-age children, travel & shipping expenses, subsidized medical insurance, pay raises every July 1st. There’s no info on the salary & benefits of Angela Merkel, the EU agent of destruction in Greece, but her net worth is nearly $12 million.

Shocking indeed, but the modus operandi also of multinational corporations, the agencies of neoliberal plunder. At least 26 Fortune 500 corporations in the US pay no income taxes, including General Electric, General Motors (bailed out by US taxpayers), Boeing, ConEdison, Merck the pharmaceutical giant, Verizon, PG&E, Newmont Mining (involved in controversial copper & gold mines in Peru involving human rights abuses & environmental destruction).

Merkel & Lagarde are only two representatives of international capital putting the screws on working people–& not just in Greece. They’re not exactly what the women’s movement had in mind when it fought for female liberation. But they’re certainly proof positive that treachery is not a gender-based phenomenon.

(Caricature from caricaturecrichard blog spot)

One of the land routes being walked by refugees from Africa & the Middle East is north from Greece to Hungary–about 700 miles (1,127 kilometers). They will have to get past the razor wire barrier wall Hungary built on the border with Serbia in the idiotic hopes of thwarting thousands of immigrants. These fellows are hitching a train traveling north from Gevgelija on the Macedonian-Greek border.

Modern immigration/refugee crises are tsunamic in proportion, with hundreds of thousands of people in movement. It’s regrettable there are only a handful of photojournalists to document the social history. Many historians don’t find working people interesting but those who have taken time to listen & report individual refugee stories have chronicled the extraordinary sacrifices of seemingly ordinary people to provide for their families; of unaccompanied children to reunite with parents who immigrated; of families to escape war, poverty, & tyranny. We don’t know the stories of these young men. We only wish them Godspeed on their journey.
Immigration is a human right. Open the borders!

(Photo by Robert Atanasovski/AFP/Getty Images)