This is a political caricature of Margaret Thatcher by English cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. He’s skewered Netanyahu & other political figures with the same ruthlessness. This is when satire reaches its heights as a political weapon & by comparison exposes the putrid character of Charlie Hebdo caricature which targets the powerless & oppressed.

I’m re-posting my commentary from January 2015.
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The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher has been rotting in hell for nearly two years now–“rusting in peace” as our Belfast brothers & sisters say. Not long enough. In a world of arrogance & criminality, she distinguished herself. It’s customary to squeak out a few dry tears for even the most despicable corpse. But why be paltry when real grief abounds?

Now here’s the kicker about Katharine Viner who co-authored “My Name is Rachel Corrie” with Alan Rickman: she’s been a journalist for the Guardian-UK since 1997 & Editor-in-Chief since June 2015. Her Wikipedia entry says she has a “particular interest” in the Middle East & during her 20s spent most of her vacations in “Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the West Bank, & other locations.”

In a 2005 Guardian piece she wrote about writing the play, Viner treats Rachel Corrie as dramatis personae & makes no reference to the political context of Corrie’s activism, i.e., Israeli apartheid & Palestinian self-determination–except to make a demeaning comment that Corrie “became a martyr to the Palestinians” & to mention that Corrie’s memorial service in Gaza was shot at by the Israeli army.

Last week, media was filled with solemn commemorations of the Charlie Hebdo (CH) massacre in January 2015. The “Je suis Charlie” crap was everywhere & everybody dropped a tear–let’s be frank, mostly & quite suitably in sarcasm. Though even now, every time a criticism gets posted about CH, some rush like Knights Templar to champion free speech, pontificate on the iconoclastic character of satire, & sermonize about blasphemy not deserving massacre.

Let’s do a little pontificating of our own in response to the latest so-called satirical cartoon from CH (in this photo) about Aylan Kurdi, the drowned 3-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey last September. The caption reads: “What would little Aylan have grown up to be? An ass groper in Germany.” It is of course intended as a satirical response to the sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve which involved some refugees as well as others & are still being investigated.

This photo from the Guardian-UK was captioned: “Relatives of Palestinian militant Mussa Zeater, who was killed in an attack by an Israeli aircraft, mourn during his funeral.” A few other media sources also posted photos from his funeral. But when you try to find out who Zeater was & what happened, there is only one mangled report by TeleSur & not a peep more from the Guardian which thought it worthy of a photo.

The TeleSur report has to be un-mangled for coherence so the best that can be discerned is that Palestinian medics claim Zeater was a civilian while Israeli military officials claim he was part of a “terrorist cell” trying to plant a bomb “at a northern beach” one kilometer (less than a mile) from the apartheid fence with Israel.

The circumstances of his assassination remain incomprehensible (including where that northern beach is) but three other Palestinians were injured in the aerial attack. From shrapnel fire or the same bomb? Were they part of that “terrorist cell”, just passersby, or farmers working their fields? TeleSUR says “Witnesses told Ma’an News that Israeli vehicles & bulldozers arrived before the strike & razed the border area.” So did the bulldozers raze the area while Zeater was allegedly planting the bomb? Or was he still just thinking about doing it while eating lunch but they knew he’d soon be coming along with the bomb & wanted to ready the area to bomb him to death? Or is the whole story a stinking pile of horse manure?

The type of Israeli aircraft used to kill Zeater is not identified but was likely a drone since Israel pioneered the use of drones for assassinations in Gaza & has used them for over a decade. Day & night, it flies thousands of surveillance & attack drones over Gaza–traumatizing the population who cannot tell whether they are just surveilling or seeking a target to bomb.

No one knows for sure how many Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by drone attacks but human rights & health officials estimate victims in the several hundreds, with nearly 80% of the victims children. Fatality statistics do not include the immense human psychological suffering caused by the steady barrage of drones flying overhead at all hours of the day. Military officials are blowing smoke when they claim drone attacks are precision, “targeted killings” without “collateral damage” since there is plenty of testimony to the opposite–especially from Gaza.

Israeli drone practices are blanketed in secrecy–just like the US Pentagon which under Obama uses thousands of drone assaults for assassination & in war. The US use of drones has increased exponentially under Obama. Only Israel, the US & UK have used drones both in combat & in places like Gaza which is not a war front. It should be reported that Israel is the world’s top manufacturer of drones & sells them to over 70 countries.

One question that emerges from all this is why the US Pentagon is sending billions of dollars of military equipment to Israel when it manufactures & sells billions to other countries? Who can keep up with the lies?

The only way to support Palestinians against such treachery is to demand no aid of any kind to Israel & to build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott (BDS) of Israel. Buy nothing with a barcode beginning 729.

Our condolences to the family & friends of Mussa Zeater. May he RIP.

(Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Nightly news reports Canadians are crossing the border to buy Powerball tickets for tomorrow’s $1.5 billion drawing. Stay home you damn interlopers. This is our lottery & you’re not going to take home my winning lottery ticket.

It’s so compelling to talk about the engagement of Rupert Murdoch & Jerry Hall but who wants to mock true love? Cynics may think it’s all about the money but crepey-skinned octogenarians do have quite an appeal when they’re lathered in Clive Christian No. 1 Imperial Majesty Perfume at $12,722 an ounce. You can’t smell the stinking corruption.

It’s actually much more compelling that nonagenarian Phyllis Schlafly has dragged her bony ass from the mausoleum to endorse Donald Trump, especially for his xenophobic views. Who, you ask? Schlafly was the rightwing loudmouth who became notorious for opposing feminism, the Equal Rights Amendment, & espousing family values in the 1970s. Of course she had to abandon her family for several years to do that but they were glad to see her go.

This is the 19th anniversary of my beloved younger brother Paul’s suicide. He had a learning disability in an unenlightened era that treated him as inferior & pitiable. He suffered deeply from that stigma & really couldn’t escape it.

To be honest, I didn’t understand his learning disability until after he died. He was a brilliant Scrabble player, had an extraordinary mathematical memory, read the NY Times & intelligently discussed the news, was wry & very witty. He was also profoundly sad & lonely & would be shy so others wouldn’t spot his “shame.”

There’s something not quite right when a Hollywood movie star can find drug lord El Chapo hiding in Mexico & the combined force of the US Drug Enforcement Agency & Mexican Federal Police cannot. Maybe that’s because international drug trafficking is a multi-trillion operation involving law enforcement, the CIA, banks, & governments–including both the Mexican & US governments. Those aren’t reckless assertions. There are decades of evidential material, litigation, high-level investigations, & research. “The Politics of Heroin” by Alfred W. McCoy, first published in 1972, remains the standard analysis of how it’s all interwoven.