Pictures are worth a thousand lies but that doesn’t make photojournalism the truth-telling part of the media–especially around issues of war & occupation. That’s most apparent today in duplicitous photo coverage of Afghanistan, Palestine, & Kashmir. There is no war coverage of Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan worth mentioning & very little of Yemen & Syria.

Photo coverage of Israel’s 2014 carpet bombing siege of Gaza was extensive–necessarily–but this photo from the Guardian-UK typifies the coverage of the current bombing campaign in Gaza. Of the few photos editors are selecting for publication, most are of vehicles damaged by airstrikes & shot from peculiar angles like this one so you can’t tell what the hell is going on.

The Left Forum is an annual conference held in NYC that draws socialists of the Bernie Sanders kind from around the world. The conferences were always excruciating for me to attend & I stopped going after attendees went rah-rah for “humanitarian intervention” into Bosnia under Clinton. For an antiwar activist, it was like being at the vampire’s ball or among the pod people.

The closing plenary this year will be co-chaired by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now & Slavoj Zizek, the jester-philosopher who forum organizers say is considered by many as “the most dangerous philosopher in the West.” How do they consider a blithering racist who wipes his nose on his sleeve to be dangerous to anyone? Certainly not to the status quo.

A Facebook friend from Gaza says the huge explosions from Israeli airstrikes are terrifying the children. Human rights groups documented that Israel targeted children in the 2014 carpet bombing siege. They also reported the psychological toll that bombing took on children when the bombing ended after seven weeks.

Keep the children of Gaza as a foremost inspiration in organizing opposition to Israeli bombing & in building BDS.

These children are in Al Shejaeiya, a residential neighborhood in Gaza City, that was nearly bombed to smithereens in 2014.

Israel has been conducting unprovoked airstrikes in Gaza since yesterday. We need to be ready to hit the streets with placards.

Media is aiding & abetting Israeli human rights crimes with an alibi claiming the Israeli military uncovered tunnels being built “by Gaza militants that Israel fears could be used to infiltrate its territory.” Even if there are tunnels that is no provocation for bombing civilians in Gaza.

We can’t let the aggression go on without a public response demanding Israel stop the bombing. It was only last year the UN said Israel had created such destruction in Gaza that it could be uninhabitable by 2020. It is hardly in a condition to sustain sporadic, short-term bombardments which Israel may use in place of carpet bombing to blunt the kind of public opposition it faced in 2014 when over a million people around the world protested.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?