Over a week ago, a local newscast reported, without elaborating, that many undocumented children caught crossing the US-Mexico border here had been sent to homes where they were abused, sexually assaulted, or forced to work as slaves. They did not repeat that report on their website or in either of the other newscasts that day nor in any newscast since. So I phoned & emailed the news director to ask for more info & which government agency had reported that. I have received no response.

In a dawn raid on Wednesday, Paris police moved in on a Roma shanty town & smashed up 135 wooden shacks where 400 people lived–mostly families with children. The camp was in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, the district of Montmartre, the Sacré Cœur basilica, & Moulin Rouge cabaret. The settlement, built in June 2015 on an abandoned railway line, was called the “Little Paris Jungle” in contrast to the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais where 6,000 live.

The SNCF, France’s state-owned rail company, is the property landowner. At the end of last year it filed a legal complaint with the Paris High Court which in turn ordered the French Interior Ministry to clear out the shacks, citing concerns about poor hygiene, heating, & fire safety. Those are the reasons they always cite to justify destroying Roma communities. The unspeakable discrimination & persecution of Roma in France, which has gone on for years, entails the entire government & not just the dopes they elect as officials.

Media reports obfuscate the situation of Roma in France. Or maybe they’re too lazy to investigate & instead rely on government press releases & canned news. Roma have lived throughout Europe for over a thousand years. They’re as European as the pasty-faced politicians trying to evict them. Since there’s so much historic social hatred directed at them, many people don’t identify themselves as Roma on census forms. But there are an estimated 400,000 in France alone whose ancestry in Europe goes back centuries.

In the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR, Roma citizens of Romania & Bulgaria began moving to France. It’s estimated (but who really knows?) that 20,000 from both countries now live in France. Since both countries became part of the European Union in 2007, there are no legal impediments to their move because of EU visa-free movement policy. The illegalities are all by the French government evicting them, razing their communities with bulldozers, handing them $300, & deporting them to Romania on chartered planes.

Every year for the past several, France has been bulldozing communities & deporting about 300 Roma a day. Estimates per year are from 10,000 to over 21,000 shipped like cargo back to Romania & Bulgaria. According to some reports, it’s a revolving door where Roma are dumped in those countries but just turn around & move back to France because–though it’s hard to imagine–discrimination against them is even more egregious in those countries than in France & the rest of Europe.

Because France flouts the EU’s visa-free policies, the EU periodically issues tough talk & threatens sanctions, none of which they’ve implemented. But that is of course because the EU is criminally culpable for its treatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees & immigrants from Africa & the Middle East, in violation of international law.

Persecutions like those of the Roma are what lead to pogroms & holocausts–which derive from racism & colonialism. It’s not that EU regimes haven’t learned the lessons of history but that such monstrous predations are built into the very matrix of the capitalist system–especially during neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

Roma are fellow human beings & whether the xenophobes who run Europe like it or not, they have every right to respect & freedom from persecution. And as long as the EU contraption exists, France has every legal obligation to allow Roma to enter & take up residence.

(Photo of bulldozers razing Roma settlement in 18th Arrondissement from SEVGI/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock)

The Israeli Foreign Ministry went ballistic yesterday over a headline in CBS News about the killing of three Palestinian teenagers at the Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem. CBS initially reported the story with the headline “3 Palestinians killed as daily violence grinds on.” After the Israeli government went on a campaign against the headline, igniting a Twitter storm, CBS changed the headline to “Israeli police kill 3 alleged Palestinian attackers” & later in the day to “Palestinians kill Israeli officer, wound another before being killed.” CBS has not offered an explanation for the changes but maybe they were a wee bit skeptical about the narrative coming out of the Israeli government.

Zionist media & social media are making quite a furor over this incident & because there were so many deaths, it requires investigation. The problem is, all of the information comes from Micky Rosenfeld, the foreign press spokesman for the Israeli police & the story stinks to high heaven.

As narrated by Rosenfeld: Three Palestinian teens “attracted the attention” of Israeli Border Police officers as they approached the Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem. How did they attract attention? Some reports say they were “acting suspiciously.” Were they doing cartwheels as they approached? Casting furtive glances? Carrying a Palestinian flag? Chanting against the occupation? Such details matter in a police report when you’ve just shot three teenagers to death.

Border Police officers asked the young men for identification & as one fished for his papers, the others opened fire, wounding two officers–one of whom died later in hospital. Rosenfeld said the Palestinians were carrying concealed Carl Gustav submachine guns, knives, & bombs. Some reports say the explosive devices were later found “near the site” of the incident. Some reports say the submachine guns were “makeshift Carl Gustav firearms.” What is a “makeshift” automatic weapon? A jacked-up Molotov Cocktail?

It was 59 degrees F/15 degrees C yesterday in Jerusalem. How did three young guys manage to conceal submachine guns that look like bazookas, plus knives, & bombs under their clothes? Were they wearing tents in such warm weather? Is that why they looked so suspicious?

When the young men allegedly opened fire, killing the police officer, other Israel Border Police took them out. A spokesperson for the hospital where the two wounded Border Police officers were taken said the one who survived was in moderate condition, “having received stab wounds across her body.” When exactly in the Rosenfeld scenario did that stabbing take place? Did one of the Palestinians pull out a knife & start stabbing while the other two were shooting off automatic weapons? How long did this go on before they were shot to death?

Can we just acknowledge that the story doesn’t make a lick of sense? That the Israeli police are probably lying through their ass to cover up a terrorist assault on Palestinian teens? If they aren’t lying, they’ll have to come up with a far more credible story than this one because not everyone is a Zionist ideologue willing to believe arrant baloney.

It is deeply sad that the young Israeli woman police officer was killed. But she was part of an occupying army, whether she understood that or not. Though she should never have been in East Jerusalem, may she Rest In Peace. The three murdered Palestinians, who are unnamed & who may not be returned to their families for burial, stand accused of a crime against which they cannot defend themselves because it’s the word of the occupying army against three dead teenagers.

Honor & build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with a barcode beginning 729. May all of the deceased Rest In Peace.

Photo is a Carl Gustav submachine gun. Is it really credible the young teens were hiding this under their clothes along with knives & bombs?

Fans of Van Morrison’s music will be appalled to learn he accepted his second knighthood. He was knighted into the feudal system by Betty Windsor last year & now received a second “sir” from Charlie Windsor. How many sirs does it take to make a dope?

They’ve always said about Van the Man that it was always about the music & that he isn’t political, though he grew up in the working class unionist section of Belfast. Everybody’s got politics; even eschewing politics is a form of it which usually signifies conservatism.

Just days ago, an English judge adjudicating asylum applications said most refugees in the “Jungle” camp at Calais are not “genuine refugees” but are benefit scroungers trying to get to the UK to suck up benefits. (The judiciary around the world seems to attract a disproportionate number of halfwits.)

One of the leading UK charities providing direct service to refugees reports to the contrary. Most asylum seekers are not allowed to work & are forced to rely on state support which can be as little as £5 a day. There’s no need for a currency conversion since it’s chump change in any currency. They cannot choose where they live, are not provided rent money, & are offered mostly ‘hard to let’ rentals that others won’t live in. The majority live in poverty, poor health, & chronic hunger.

There’s a TV dramatization about the swindler Bernie Madoff bilking people, including through charitable donations. Part of his spiel was reading the self-aggrandizing crap Elie Wiesel croons about not remaining silent against injustice. Ironically, Wiesel was one of the people Madoff swindled. Apparently there’s a circle of life among swindlers.

There’s no mercy for the Weasel after he published full page ads during Israel’s 2014 bombing siege in Gaza claiming Palestinians used their children as human shields though Israel was denounced by human rights groups for targeting children with bombers. To hell with the swindlers!

Twice in the past month, two socialist guys ridiculed my running for office. One called it a political stunt & the other questioned my capabilities. Are they kidding me!? Have they checked out the alternatives? Do they think Trump, Cruz, Clinton, or Sanders are suited for anything other than animal control officers? And only then after they get extensive remedial job training? Misogyny, thy name is stupid.

No one knew better than me how hard it would be to run as a socialist while the socialist movement is so divided. But only the timid & defeated admit impediments to necessity? Somebody has to stand up against the corporate fiasco of US electoral politics & say the right thing. Why not me, since I’m one of America’s oldest activists?

It’s good news that some governments are taking proactive measures to prevent the spread of Aedes mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus. In adults, the virus can cause a mild rash & slight fever but infected pregnant women can have babies with microcephaly, a condition with an extremely small head & brain damage. The parents of microcephalic babies profess the same love for their kids as any other but in countries without social services for those with disability, it’s an extreme burden & stress that the already poor do not need.

It may surprise many that Israel, which bills itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, does not have a constitution or a bill of rights. When paramilitary terrorist groups set up Israel, they chartered a constituent assembly to formulate one but it couldn’t broker the immense contradictions between conservative Jews who considered the Torah sufficient legal foundation for the colonial state & more secular Jews who wanted a modern constitution to legitimize colonialism.

Democracy & theocracy are mutually exclusive, but more importantly, democracy is incompatible with colonialism & apartheid, the actual legal reality of Israel. The constituent assembly, unable to fulfill its mandate, morphed into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament or colonial administration, which extemporizes a legal framework according to the needs of apartheid.

Last Sunday, the Knesset passed a law allowing police to stop & frisk without probable cause. Probable cause is a fixture in any bill of rights (though habitually flouted in the US Black community). The Jerusalem Post, an unsavory Israeli publication, said the Knesset was “expanding the meaning of probable cause” by eliminating it. When did sarcasm become accepted legal analysis?

Human rights groups rightly protest the law as a flagrant violation of international law & as a weapon of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel. Well that’s exactly what it’s intended to do: harass, humiliate, & assault Palestinians without facing legal hassles. It’s the legalization of racist profiling

The question is why does Israel need such a law when that has been its colonial practice for 68 years? The rationale given is to counter the threat of knife-wielding Palestinians but that’s baloney. Under the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, & Gaza, it’s routine for Israeli soldiers to body search without probable cause & there’s plenty of photographic documentation for that. At gunpoint, soldiers stop & frisk adult men, adult women (including by male soldiers), old people, & kids on their way to school. Part of the procedure often involves aggressions like kicking the legs or pushing in the back of the knees to make people fall.

This colonial practice goes along with all the other policies like extrajudicial killing of Palestinians; curfews & restrictions on the movement of Palestinians; banning Palestinian workers from Israeli worksites; demolition of homes; torching of homes & mosques; arrest & incarceration of small children; indefinite incarceration without criminal charges. Israel never lets a little stinking law stand in the way of its colonial mission.

Far from being a democratic institution, the Knesset is a colonial administration that will improvise any legal fiction required to facilitate the expropriation of Palestine, including harassment, humiliation, & the constant use of extreme violence.

In this photo, an Israeli soldier is ordering a Palestinian man to lift his clothing for a body search in Hebron, West Bank. We aren’t told, but the young fellow was likely on his way to work or school & there was no reason in the world to suspect him of plotting a crime. This is just pro forma practice under Israeli occupation.

Build & honor the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with a label beginning 729.

(Photo by Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA)

I love the political tradition of burning effigies. We don’t have that tradition here but we sure as hell could use it since we have more than our share of psycho politicians. Come to think of it, a lot of the effigies burned overseas are US politicians. But why haven’t they gotten to Kissinger yet? He should burn before he ever gets to hell. Filipino activists seem to have mastered effigy making & effigy burning & should consider offering workshops on how to do it with style.