The tsunami of refugees entering Europe through the Greek islands & the barbarism they’re facing as they seek sanctuary take all our attention. But there are patterns within immigration that are important to note. We understand why Syrians, Afghans, Palestinians are fleeing for their lives. Their flight for refuge from war includes entire families–small children to elderly. However one substantial group of refugees is reportedly single men from Pakistan hoping to travel to the UK & Ireland.

It isn’t often noted but Pakistanis have shown up on all the major immigration routes for a long time–including to Australia & through the southern US border via Mexico.

Ireland is attempting legal maneuvers to deport them & it isn’t clear why they would go to Ireland since so many native Irish are emigrating to find work. But then Pakistanis are also fleeing to Afghanistan, a war zone which millions of Afghans fled for Iran & Pakistan. Such are the sarcasms of modern war.

In the past year over 210,000 Pakistanis, including tens of thousands of children, crossed into Afghanistan, mostly from the North Waziristan province where the US has long been drone bombing & the Pakistani military launched its own bombing offensive against the Taliban.

There are many other reasons for Pakistanis to flee, including massive flooding & political conflict in the cities. European authorities don’t have the right to interrogate the reasons why they want asylum. Immigration is a human right.

What this points out more than anything is the imperative of re-building the international antiwar movement to demand the US & its proxy allies stop the bombing, end the occupations, & end the wars turning the Middle East into a killing field.

The photo is Pakistani refugees landing at Kos.

(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

European Union on a dinghy: the solution to the refugee crisis in Europe.

Another dinghy will be needed in the Atlantic to ship out the Obama administration & Home Security.

Destination? Who gives a hoot?

The photo (on the top) is of young women defending a small boy being assaulted by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. A video & several photos of the incident have circulated because it displays almost iconic toughness against the barbaric occupation. All of these women stand a chance of being arrested with the boy & put indefinitely in the Israeli gulag subject to torture & abuse.

But unless the eyes deceive, this isn’t the first time the young girl in the pink & yellow tee-shirt has gone up against IDF soldiers. The photo (on the bottom) was taken in February 2015 also in the West Bank. The girl in the black tee saying “Palestine” is her spitting image.

We stand in awe of the spirit of Intifada; we are also outraged that young people grow up having to fight military occupation & dispossession.

Build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel. Demand no military aid to Israel.

(Photos by Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images)

This photo of Bush in New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina falls under the rubric of re-writing history. It’s how scoundrels, psychos, & mass murderers get resurrected as heroes.

For one week, people around the world witnessed on live television that the Bush regime did absolutely nothing while hundreds of Black residents of New Orleans were on rooftops waiting for rescue & thousands were crammed into a sports stadium without food & water crying for help. A regime that has taken out whole countries with sophisticated, state-of-the art military equipment would not deliver emergency aid to people because they were Black–& then vilified them as looters.

We don’t know who these young women are that they would participate in this dog & pony spectacle. Hopefully they will study Katrina & understand how compromising & dishonest this image is–especially because retrospectives on Katrina point out that New Orleans is back as a tourist haven but that the 9th Ward where the poorest Black residents lived remains a shambles & un-rebuilt.

All power to the emerging civil rights & Black power movement. May they kick ass & set the historic record straight as the first civil rights movement in the 1960s began.

(Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP)

This photo is from a pictorial on albinism in Tanzania which has the highest rates of albinism in the world & where they suffer extreme violence & persecution.

Disability of every kind is not always persecuted elsewhere so much as made invisible so as not to discomfort. That’s why people with disabilities organize social justice movements–like the self advocacy movement for those with learning difficulties–to change institutional practices, social prejudices, & end discrimination & marginalization.

After the scientific explanations are rendered, medical opinion elaborated, & social hatred analyzed, what it comes down to is the simple mantra of the oppressed everywhere: no human being is alien; none is defective. Every human being is perfect just the way they are.

(Photo is portrait of Milu Kujaga by Patrick Gries)

When I posted about Mariah Carey & Barbra Streisand supporting Israeli apartheid I was criticizing their politics, not their musical talents nor their beauty. Their talents & beauty are irrelevant if not also beyond dispute. So imagine my horror to see people using those posts to ridicule & abuse both women in the most misogynist mean-spirited way. They were called ugly, “hoes.” “effing bitches,” whores for Israel, & terms too vile to repeat.

Many of those dishing out this crap were women. All such comments dropped on my wall were deleted because I am a feminist & cannot tolerate women–even those with stinking rotten politics–being abused for their gender.

In my political life being vilified as a woman activist has been preeminent so I understand exactly what is going on. Apolitical women-haters (of both genders) give vent to social hatred & claim it’s for a good cause. All that’s left to say is this is pathetic, rancid, grotesque.

Barbra Streisand was on TV tonight promoting her new album of duets. She has such a lovely voice–but it’s hard to listen to her without thinking of her ardent support for the Israeli military in its murderous assault on Gaza last summer.

Every year she heads up a glitzy fundraiser in Beverly Hills for the IDF. The one last November–just three months after the IDF bombed Gaza to smithereens–raised $33.5 million from over 1,200 celebrity guests including Chris Tucker, Pamela Anderson, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, & even Ricky Martin. So much for that “la vida loca,” Ricky, when you support carpet bombing & apartheid.
A couple years ago she carted all her relatives to Israel to perform for the 90th birthday of then president Shimon Peres–whose obituary I look forward to writing. She called Israel “a shining beacon of hope in the world.”

It’s a pity. All that talent. All that amorality when it comes to Israel.
This regrettable moment of Peres & Streisand was at his birthday party. It looks like she’s giving his corpse mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Nearly 71 years old & my adrenalin still shoots sky high when some guy decides to criticize me–like women are waiting around for men to pronounce judgement on our work & groveling for a sign we pass muster. It isn’t the criticism that rankles–who doesn’t want to improve their work?–but the language used always is a dead-give-away that what’s going on is put-down, not constructive, & because they wouldn’t think to critique other men’s work.