The delights of the fake fart

Miquel and me 4:5:2016

This is Miguel, my favorite little ten-year-old boy. A few years ago he used to regale me with fart jokes & the sound of fake farts which he learned on vacation in Mexico. He’s aged out of that now that he turned ten today. But his five-year-old cousin Joanna has taken up the mantle & spent over an hour entertaining me with her vocal imitations. So indecorous. So absolutely delightful.

Happy birthday to my little friend. heart emoticon

We’re getting a front seat into how the two parties really work. CBS reported that Sanders took Wisconsin tonight. But the analyst went on to say that despite his overwhelming popular lead, Clinton has the delegates sewed up & Sanders can’t catch up. Those delegates determine the nominee. That sure isn’t how we were taught US democracy in high school social studies class. Can someone explain why they bother to calculate popular votes if they don’t mean squat? And why the hell we are putting up with that kind of faux-democracy?

Donovan, the weasel & troubadour of Israeli apartheid

Donovan from youtube

Behold the weasel Donovan! After the Scottish singer cancelled his Tel Aviv concert in January, BDS supporters jumped to the wrong conclusion & went to his wall with profuse gratitude assuming he’d done it to respect BDS. We didn’t know he was running us around the block.

The postponement was a cover. They changed venue & the new troubadour for apartheid performed last Saturday to raise funds to support transcendental meditation in Israel. Only 400 people showed up at the second-rate venue. So at least Israelis have a measure of what kind of musician is willing to disrespect BDS & entertain them.

When asked by Israeli media if the cancellations had anything to do with BDS or “threats over performing in Israel,” Donovan drew on the sentimental dreck his music is noted for, like “Mellow Yellow” & “Sunshine Superman,” calling himself a “a Gaelic Bard of the highest order.”

It’s always disappointing when people refuse to do the right thing; it’s damn ugly when they try to cover their asses with sentimental dreck.

(Photo is the Gaelic weasel of the highest order performing in the dive in Tel Aviv from YouTube)

Maybe you have to be of a certain age not to be awestruck by the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. But if you came of age in the 1960s, you’ve been through pretty much the same thing before with Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jesse Jackson,  Ralph Nader–& in many ways, Barack Obama. They’re what used to be called “people’s movements.”

You never want to get jaded in politics or insensitive to new developments but you also don’t want to get taken for a ride on a bandwagon.

There’s lots of blogging about the deeper meaning of the Sanders campaign. Despite the casual dismissal of Sanders’ support for drone aircraft, for Israel & a Jewish-only state, & his opposition to rights for undocumented immigrants, perhaps when the campaign shakes out, one way or the other, Sanders’ supporters will become part of rebuilding the antiwar movement, become central to building BDS, & organize for immigrant/refugee rights. That would be the sure sign of a deeper political meaning. Color me skeptical. But prove me wrong.

Recently, in a disagreement with a progressive guy, he told me my arguments relied on “inapplicable generalizations aimed at eliciting emotional reactions.”

Is there a more classic, time-worn cliche to put down a woman you can’t cogently answer? Is there a woman anywhere who wouldn’t be a millionaire if she had a dime for every time that was said to her? Do we have to explain the misogynist assumptions behind the claim that women think/argue with their hearts & men with their heads?

Home demolitions by Israel soldiers to punish alleged Palestinian crimes

Home of Ihab Maswadeh ( REUTERS:Mussa Qawasma) Apr 4 2016

The Reuters caption to this photo generated quite an uproar in Zionist media after CAMERA, a pro-Israel media hound dog, objected to its veracity.

The caption on March 31st read: “HEBRON, Palestinian Territories;
The mother of Palestinian Ihab Maswadeh inspects belongings after their family house was partially demolished by the Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Hebron March 31, 2016. According to the Israeli military, Ihab Maswadeh was shot dead by Israeli troops after he attempted to stab an Israeli soldier last December.”

CAMERA, who conducts its activity in the deranged genre, made a stink with Reuters, saying that young Maswadeh did not attempt to stab an Israeli soldier but actually fatally wounded an Israeli settler working as a gardener near the Cave of the Patriarchs. CAMERA doesn’t explain how it knows more than the Israeli military that shot Maswadeh dead.

We could go back & forth with CAMERA till the cows come home. They claim Reuters issued a correction to the original caption but it is as yet no where to be found. Actually, it’s fairly irrelevant whether it was a soldier or a settler since most of those settlers are armed to the teeth & aggressive as hell against Palestinians.

We won’t bring up that the Cave of the Patriarchs is a Muslim holy site which Israel is trying to claim & expropriate (as it does the Al-Aqsa mosque) as a Jewish holy site; we won’t refer to the 1994 massacre at the site by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein which killed 29 Palestinian worshippers & wounded 125 others; we won’t even bring up the arrant horse manure of claims that Palestinians are being shot after stabbing attempts when it is clear they are being summarily executed.

We just want to focus on the issue depicted here: that Israel, which executed young Maswadeh on the spot & denied him due process for their lying-assed accusations, punishes his surviving family by demolishing their home. Where is the precedent for that in law? How does Israel justify making a family homeless because of unproven allegations against one of the family members?

Didn’t Israelis just put up a collective howl of approval for the soldier who shot Palestinian Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif in the head when he was already shot & lying on the ground incapacitated? Does the rule of law exist at all under Israeli military occupation? Or is it just barbarisms of all kinds justified by some fictitious Old Testament claim to Palestine?

Build & honor the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Palestine. Check every label & buy nothing with barcode beginning 729.

(Photo by Mussa Qawasma/Reuters)