It may seem that Kashmir & Palestine are just tempests in a teapot compared to the massive bombing in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen. Neither country is being bombed but they are both among the most militarized regions in the world. Not because they’re small potatoes in the geopolitical scheme of things but because they are central. What makes them so important is unremitting, unarmed opposition to brutal occupations which makes them a beacon to humanity around the world.

Long live Palestinian Intifada! Long live Kashmiri Intifada!

Has the European Union completely lost its mind? Because it is demonstrating in so many ways–austerity programs in Europe, support for Israeli apartheid, & savagery toward war refugees–that it is in institutional free-fall into hell. It hasn’t been around that long. It’s time to make it go away. Their anti-social, violent policies expose what happens when institutions are set up to serve private plunder at the expense of human needs.

Take a look at this photo of refugees protesting on the Greek-Macedonia border where hundreds of distraught, hungry, cold, miserable & desperate refugees tried to storm the razor wire border fence. Macedonian police, who are enforcing EU policies, tried to repel them by coming at them with tear gas, stun grenades, plastic bullets, & a water cannon. A military arsenal against war-traumatized, unarmed people.

Yesterday, the government of Jakarta, Indonesia, moved in heavy equipment & 4,000 police & military officers to evict residents & demolish nearly 600 houses in a local slum where many residents had lived over 20 to 40 years. The slum was on public lands in the harbor front area of north Jakarta called Luar Batang, in a fish market area called Pasar Ikan.

The Jakarta government has forcibly bulldozed several slums in the past months as part of the same neoliberal process happening on every continent. Thousands, if not the majority, of urban slum residents were farmers & farm workers dispossessed & displaced by multinational agribusiness enterprises who destroy sustainable agriculture & establish plantations usually based on mono-crop economics. In Indonesia, that has meant a violent conflict between farmers & government troops enforcing land grabs for palm oil plantations. The process is the same on every continent, especially affecting indigenous peoples’ rights. But it has met most violent resistance in places like Brazil, Peru, India, Uganda, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia.

That dispossession is what is driving the massive refugee crises from those regions both into urban slums & to other countries for work. The conflict with farmers in Indonesia has gotten little news coverage; the catastrophe of what deforestation for palm oil plantations has done to orangutans has received some coverage; how deforestation has created climate change & massive flooding in Indonesia has received almost no coverage. But it’s all of a piece with neoliberal plunder & the growth of urban slums.

Another part of the neoliberal process is razing the slums that became havens for dispossessed farmers, many of whom are from indigenous tribes. Squatting settlements were often built on public lands which the IMF & World Bank are now demanding be privatized for development. It’s an ubiquitous, international process played out with relentless aggression & uniformity.

Just like everywhere else, the Jakarta waterfront area is being reclaimed for development as a tourist area since it’s a waterfront & the Luar Batang Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Jakarta, is located in Pasar Ikan. The historic mosque already receives thousands of visitors every year. The government is razing several slums in the coastal area to develop twelve different tourist areas including a sports stadium, maritime museum, golfing, shopping malls, nightlife, & amusement parks. The IMF & World Bank are turning the countrysides into plantations & the cities into amusement parks for the well-heeled, all at the expense of working people & turning them into paupers.

Residents of Luar Batang resisted the evictions & demolitions but just like everywhere else they were met with tear gas & truncheons. Evicted residents were not offered compensation; some were offered low-cost housing elsewhere but many say they cannot afford rent & others say they found the apartments occupied when they tried to move in their possessions.

It looks like the IMF & World Bank are arch-villains in the neoliberal scheme of things. Their tenure & tyranny on this planet have run their course. Time to take them out & establish institutions that serve human needs & not private plunder.

Housing is a human right. No if, ands, or buts.

Photo is police & military units moving in to evict & demolish homes yesterday in Luar Batang.

(Photo by Dita Alangkara/AP)

Our man Carlos Santana didn’t fully grasp the meaning of apartheid & ethnic cleansing when Palestinians & BDS activists prevailed on him in 2010 to honor the cultural boycott of Israel. For his scheduled July 2016 concert, he’s pretending he can spread his “message of love, light & peace” with his voice ricochetting off an apartheid wall.

We want to give him every chance to change his ‘Evil Ways’ & not use ‘Jingo’ to rationalize a ‘Soul Sacrifice’ to Israel.

Please sign & share this FB appeal asking him to honor the cultural boycott.

Born-again humanitarian Jimmy Carter is frequently cited for his views on politicians: recently for saying he preferred Drumpf to Cruz & in a two-year old interview (circulating on FB) for saying Clinton was ineffective in bringing about peace during her tenure as secretary of state. He compared her unfavorably to John Kerry who he said made ‘enormous strides’ in negotiating between Israel & Palestinians–for which there is no evidence except to the contrary.

Let’s cut the crap. There’s no question that Clinton, in league with her lowlife husband & in her capacity as secretary of state, milked Haiti for immense personal fortune in what has to be one of the most grotesques cases of grand larceny in US history. There’s no question she milked her relations with Israeli officials to get Zionist bucks & backing for her presidential campaign. She’s a sleazy politician. That’s what sleazy, self-serving politicians do.

It is politically irresponsible to throw around accusations that Edward Snowden is a CIA operative just because you disagree with something he said. You can’t make that assertion & spread it around like the gospel truth just because you get ‘bad vibes’ from the guy.

If you don’t like what he says or does, then you analyze it on its merits. But if all you’re packing is a queasy feeling, that’s not possible. Your queasy feeling wouldn’t stand up in a court of law & may indicate nothing more than a bad case of indigestion or paranoia.

In a CNN interview, Clinton said:

“Hamas provokes Israel. They often pretend to have people in civilian garb acting as though they are civilians who are Hamas fighters. It’s a very different undertaking for Israel to target those who are targeting them. And I think Israel has had to defend itself, has a right to defend itself.”

One of the most expensive & elite educations in the world, all that vaunted foreign policy experience & this is the gibberish that groveling reduces you to. Most people who never finished high school could talk with more coherence. Because they’re not talking through their ass.

For so long I’ve lived with the secret shame of detesting meals around my dogs who hover around the table with that accusatory look they cultivate to get food. (Never call a dog a dummy!) I even felt slight guilt when I had to leave the house just to get away from them or lose my mind. Their companionship is lovely but sometimes you just want to go the toilet by yourself without an attentive audience.

That’s why dog parks aren’t just for socializing & exercising dogs but fortherapy for caretakers. I learned that some caretakers eat in the car, some in fast food joints, some in the bathroom just to get away from their dogs. I haven’t stooped that low but just go outside on the porch.

In 2010, Santana pulled out of a scheduled performance in Israel citing scheduling difficulties. Palestinians & BDS activists, giving him the benefits of respect, presumed it was a result of our appeals to honor the cultural boycott of Israel.

After the massive bombing siege of Gaza in 2014, Santana would surely have realized the wisdom of his decision, even if it was only over scheduling conflicts.

But now it is announced he will perform in Tel Aviv on July 30th as part of his Luminosity Tour. Luminosity means the brightness of a celestial object or the rate of emission of radiation. Looks like our man has chosen to emit toxic radiation from Tel Aviv.