A blast from the forgettable past: a few years ago, Femen bare-breasted protesters were quite the rage among male leftists who declared them, without an ounce of embarrassment, as the rebirth of feminism. That would be taking mansplaining to the highest levels of burlesque. Or is it the lowest levels?

With no small amount of satisfaction (you can call it smugness if you like), I admit I was among the first to out Femen as Islamophobic, male-dominated, nefariously funded, phony-assed grandstanders & exhibitionists. Those leftist men who had looked forward to prurient protesting (there’s nothing better than combining political outrage & erotic drooling) were not amused, nor were they educated by my ridicule.

At some point it seemed Femen understood it’s 15 minutes of fame was in unwarranted overtime & they were seldom seen anymore. Now in the past week I’ve seen a few photos of them again posing & getting arrested.

Someone has to tell them that naked protesting is so yesterday, so 2010. Women find that wearing our undies in public gets the cogent political message across so much stronger than if our breasts decorated with pasties are swinging in the breeze. That’s not prudery or excessive modesty but an insistence on being taken seriously as political people without demeaning ourselves by stripping to our underwear.

Why do some people consider social criticism to be hate-mongering? Social criticism is an ancient practice respected by those with great expectations for the human race, who detest social inequality & want to get to the bottom of what causes it so we can bring it to an end. It has nothing in common with misanthropy & less in common with butt-kissing the status quo. If you think it’s hateful, maybe it’s because you have some investment in social inequality.

Racist violence in Israel

Afro-Israeli

Reposting this from one year ago today since racist conflicts in Israel are crescendoing inevitably since supremacism & racism are the heart of Zionist ideology & a Jewish-only state. Actually, that is the very Achilles Heel of Zionism which is incompatible with democracy.

Zionists are unable to explain (away) this picture of Israeli cops beating up on Ethiopians in Tel Aviv protesting racist discrimination & police brutality–which the media caption calls “alleged” even after they post this photo that would be evidence in criminal court.

It’s a great political disadvantage for Israel to have international exposure of its profound racism–built into the very nature of a Jewish-only state–whilst it is fighting a battle against the economic & cultural boycott (BDS) & growing Palestinian solidarity. But the unbearable tensions & contradictions of Zionism, unable to deliver on its promises, are erupting within Israel. That makes BDS all the more important.

There are leftists, who don’t know their ass from their elbows, who claim BDS will hurt Israeli workers. Do they mean the workers living in Zionist settlements in the West Bank on Palestinian lands? The very ones poisoning Palestinian water wells, pulling up their olive trees, torching the mosques, attacking the little kids? Or do they mean workers in Israel’s blood diamond industry? Or perhaps in the defense industry which produces 41% of all drones? It would be good if these leftist moralists would evince an iota of actual information on which they base their claims–instead of formulas that would make even Karl Marx turn over in his grave & weep.

BDS will affect Israeli workers & that’s a damn good thing. If they continue in their majority to support apartheid & ethnic cleansing, they’re facing a political abyss & a future rooted in war & militarism. If BDS shakes them up, rattles their consciousness, forces them to examine Zionism & a Jewish-only state (making them more backward than feudalism), that is nothing but politically necessary.

The world watched in horror last summer as residents in Sderot, Israel pulled up easy chairs in the hills overlooking Gaza to cheer, wave the Israeli flag, & get a front row seat to genocide; we read Israeli writers discuss how the ethnic cleansing of Gaza was good for getting rid of belly fat. Human beings were meant for better things than psychopathy. Those whose ancestors suffered unbearable persecution for centuries were meant for better things than social hatred. They should be gurus of social tolerance & respect, not avatars of cossacks & storm troopers.

The violence against Ethiopian Israelis is of a piece with apartheid & the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Standing with them, building the economic & cultural boycott of Israel is a way of reaching out to Israeli workers in a gesture of good will, not with aggression. Because the only solution to the chaos Zionism has wrought is a democratic secular state where Palestinians & Jews live as brothers & sisters & they can stand together as beacons for the rest of humanity.

(Photo by Jack Guez/AFP)

Casualties of Israeli bombing of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip

Palestinian boys in Beit Lahiya, Gaza (REUTERS:Mohammed Salem) May 5 2016

These little boys looking out the window are in Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Beit Lahiya was targeted during Israel’s 51-day carpet bombing siege in 2014 & a special needs facility was bombed. Two adults with mental & physical disabilities were killed.

In March of this year an Israeli airstrike on Beit Lahiya killed a 6-year-old girl named Israa Abu Khussa.

These little guys are not safe. That gives a certain urgency to honoring & building the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729 & check every damn barcode to make sure. Singers who violate the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott most often perform in Tel Aviv, about 45 miles from Beit Lahiya, thus providing the soundtrack for ethnic cleansing. That’s why appealing to them to honor the boycott is so important.

It’s time to bring Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing to its knees. Build BDS

(Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Persecution & ethnic cleansing of Muslims around the world

Rohingya boy in fire at camp (REUTERS:Soe Zeya Tun) May 5 2016

If we believe everything we read & never investigate the dominant political narratives, Islam is a belligerent theology producing paramilitary terrorist groups all over the world; violence is inherent to Islam.

In fact, the persecution & ethnic cleansing of Muslims around the world is centuries-old & remains violently operative in several countries today, including (but not only) India, China, Myanmar, the Philippines, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia. This indictment includes the rancid promulgation of Islamophobia used today by the US, European, & other countries to justify bombing the hell out of countries in the Middle East, most notably (but not only) Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza.

If in the onslaught of persecution, some Muslim activists have developed wrong-headed strategies to oppose it, that’s the nature of political resistance under stress. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, & groups of that ideological genre owe more to malicious meddling by the CIA & US Pentagon than to any theological tenets of Islam.

Standing against Islamophobia today–& not bending an inch in that direction–is central to opposing war, occupation, genocide. If you want to look for the religion & theology causing problems around the world, it is best found in the stock market creed that makes a god of greed.

This little guy is a Rohingya Muslim walking midst the ruins of one of the concentration camps Myanmar has set up for Muslims in Rakhine State near Sittwe.

(Photo by Soe Zaya Tun/Reuters)

With Drumpf as its candidate, the Republican party can bend over & kiss its ass goodbye. How can it ever survive being the laughingstock of the world?

Millie, my Pit Bull rescue, can’t stay with me & I was unable to find a single rescue group able or willing to take her. They were either over-capacity or wouldn’t take Millie since she had attacked a little dog.

Whilst she stayed here, my little ones couldn’t play outside & she couldn’t come in at night so she wailed & barked the first night & slept peacefully in my car the second. But that couldn’t go on long so I woke up today & decided she had to be relinquished to the only shelter in town–which is a kill shelter.

In a distraught state, I decided to take her to the dog park kind of like a last meal thing & then take her on to the shelter. At the park, we met a long-time friend from the dog park who has three of his own, including a Rottweiler. He offered to take Millie to the shelter for me since he lives nearby & I agreed since it was easier for me emotionally.

All morning I kept thinking Millie needed a miracle & hoping some of the many wonderful blessings I receive from FB friends would materialize–& they did. I called my dog park friend this afternoon to see how it went with Millie & he told me she was too sweet a dog to euthanize so he kept her & will commit to finding her a suitable family.

Thank you for the blessings. They aren’t wasted on a dog. And I selfishly thought of them as my own. 

Fire in Myanmar concentration camp for Rohingya Muslims

Rohingya fire (REUTERS:Soe Zeya Tun) May 4 2016

Sometimes a fire is just an unfortunate accident. And sometimes it’s arson with malice aforethought–like the hundreds of slum fires around the world for purposes of gentrification. This fire at one of Myanmar’s eight concentration camps for Rohingya Muslims is likely akin to the latter kind, even though officials are suggesting it was started by an unattended kitchen stove & spread by wind.

At least 440 bamboo huts were destroyed, 2,000 made homeless, 14 people have been reported injured so far & there are unconfirmed fatalities.

Media reports that the concentration camps, which they politely call “internally displaced persons camps” are for Rohingya displaced by “communal violence” in 2012. What the hell is “communal violence”? It’s such a vague, neutral term for genocide by the military junta & rabid Buddhists who go on periodic sprees of arson forcing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee for their lives.

State officials, the very ones sanctioning the concentration camps & ethnic cleansing, assured media that arson victims are being provided with food & housing & that the government is trying to replace the burned out homes as soon as possible. Only the most stupidly gullible would report that as gospel truth.

OCHA, a UN agency, said they would be coordinating humanitarian aid for the victims. Perhaps they should have been raising a hue & cry before the fire against Myanmar forcing Rohingya into concentration camps which they cannot leave.

At this point, no one should ask where Nobel Peace Prize winner & now State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi is in this disaster. Her political party came to power last month by playing ball with the junta, not by standing up against the genocide of Rohingya. Neoliberal economics are in full force in Myanmar & that land now used for concentration camps may well be wanted for multinational mining or agribusiness enterprises.

This woman who lost her home is surveying the damage at the camp.

(Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Emancipation US-style in Afghanistan

Afghan women waiting for charity (Muhammad Sadiq:EPA) May 4 2016

Emancipation, US-style: these women in Kandahar, Afghanistan are receiving aid from a Muslim charity because, according to the caption, “Afghans are experiencing a food crisis despite a good grain harvest last year.”

See what happens when you send in US Marines to liberate women! Fifteen years of US-style emancipation & thousands of families are begging for food. Couldn’t the Pentagon’s salvation army truck in mountains of food from overstuffed supermarkets in the US?

Afghanistan may have had a bumper crop of grains but probably nothing compared to the size & acreage of its poppy crops which US military are busy guarding & CIA transport planes are busy flying out of the country for processing. Who has time for a little matter like food?

The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement. US out of Afghanistan & everywhere else it is!

(Photo by Muhammad Sadiq/EPA)

Smarmy Cruz is gone in a blaze of flatulence, promising to maintain the fight for “Judeo-Christian values” in the US. His defeat might be the one thing lesser evil politics has done right this campaign.