Monthly Archives: June 2016

News

Today is 49th commemoration of 1967 Six-Day War of Israel against Arab regimes

68 years of occupation- then & now (Images From Palestine)

This is an updated post commemorating the 1967 Six-Day War of Israel against Arab regimes which has proven so tragic for the Palestinians. It is a day to recommit to Palestinian solidarity:

Today is the 49th commemoration of the June 1967 Six-Day War when the Israeli military routed the armies of Jordan, Egypt, & Syria. It is a watershed & deeply tragic moment in history. Israel’s victory demonstrated its value to the US as a fortress for US hegemony in the Middle East & US military aid has been increasing ever since. The war altered the relationship between the US & Arab countries to the disadvantage of the Arab peoples & altered the relationship between Arab regimes & the Palestinian people.

In violation of international law, Israel militarily occupied more of Palestine, including Gaza, the West Bank, & East Jerusalem & launched an aggressive settlement program moving Zionist settlers from all over Kingdom Come to claim Palestinian land in the occupied territories.

Many politicians & liberal Zionists call for Israel to remove its troops & go back to the 1967 borders. That’s an unworkable & unacceptable bantustate solution which will only guarantee continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The only possible resolution under the rubrics of nation-states is a democratic secular state including Jews & Palestinians within the 1948 borders–all of Palestine before Zionist paramilitary terrorists dispossessed them.

Today, there are millions of Palestinian supporters across the globe. Massive protests against Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, & colonialism combined with the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel (BDS) have the power to help bring justice to Palestinians, peace & sanity to Israeli Jews, & an end to US militarism in the Middle East.

(Photo is titled “68 years of occupation: then & now” from FB wall of Images From Palestine)

News

Elizabeth Warren endorses Clinton & lobbies for vice president job

Elizabeth Warren endorse Clinton

Things just keep getting better & better with lesser evil politics–just when you think they’ve met their Waterloo in the candidacies of Drumpf & Clinton. In any sane society, such a run-off would be the eclipse of electoral illusions. But none cling so tenaciously to pipe dreams than the so-called “progressive left” who will now move from the Sanders revolution to the Clinton bandwagon.

Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of the progressive left, will chasten the impetuous thrust of the “Bernie or Bust” movement with her recent vigorous endorsement of Clinton. She told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC: “I’m ready to work my heart out for Hillary Clinton.” She also told Maddow she was ready & willing to be Clinton’s running mate. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict the “Bernie or Bust” crowd will make a stampede back to the Democratic Party if Warren is the vice presidential candidate.

Based on Warren’s compromised politics, it’s actually a very good political fit. But the progressive left considers Warren an exemplar of democratic politics for the same reasons they went gaga over Sanders. She talks consumer rights even while she supports reactionary foreign policy, most especially Israeli colonialism. It’s the old story of provincialism going overseas to roost–& of their not being able to draw connections between economic devastation in the US & drone warfare overseas.

It is the height of political naivety, if not idiocy, to parse political distinctions between Clinton & Drumpf–though we will be thrust into a vortex of scare-mongering by media & politicians like Warren. Either one would be a disaster for working people in this country & around the world. Both of them would be administering the policies of a ruling oligarchy who will not allow their vested interests & corrupt system to be taken out by either of the two wretched candidates but will give the winner the full support of all its agencies of rule. Neither one would be allowed to get out of line with US oligarchic interests which include continuing the war on the Black community; increasing attacks on social services like welfare, education, social security, Medicare & Medicaid; military build-ups in the Asia-Pacific region; military intervention in the Middle East & support for Israeli colonialism. The programs of Drumpf & Clinton would be indistinguishable except in style.

This should be the election & the era for abandoning the dead-end of lesser evil politics & for forging new, realistic ways to make this world suitable for human beings to live & love in.

(Photo is Warren from screen shot of Maddow interview)

News

Phil Windsor’s 95th birthday

Phil's b'day June 10 2014

Reposting this from June 10th 2014 just because I shamelessly think it’s funny; if you can’t laugh at your own sarcasm, why write it?

One simply cannot let the day pass without acknowledging the 93rd birthday of Phil Mountbatten, Betty Windsor’s consort whom she affectionately calls her “anus horribilis.” Our man actually has several last names in German & Greek because no one was willing to claim this unfortunate child even as a newborn–though it doesn’t really matter which name you call him since they all go back to the same set of trolls in the Black Forest. European moochocracy is an incestuous thing which has not belied the warnings of science in any way.

Phil is remarkable in that he’s been able to make it through over nine decades without accomplishing a damn thing. There are garden slugs who exhibit more initiative. They say he speaks a few languages but Betty & her privy council prefer he stick close to English where his guttural obscenities can be mistaken for a phlegm condition.

He does have a military record during WWII but it’s best not to ask much about it. In handling the searchlights & stoking the boilers on a battleship, he nearly brought down the combined allied navy. He’s in the annals of naval history–& not in a good way.

After he married Betty, who was smitten with his venality at a young age, the privy council tried him out on diplomatic duty, traveling to all the former colonies (now called the Commonwealth). After he was deported several times in chains for unseemly comments & conduct the privy council decided it best to keep him under close supervision in Buckingham Palace & just keep stuffing his face with whiskey.

Betty has remained steadfast in her affections for Phil despite his chronic flatulence problem & this is not at all touching but deeply regrettable. They have spawned four children together, one more corrupt than the next & with that streak of venality Phil is so renowned for.

These gunners from one of Betty’s elite artillery troops fire a 41-gun salute in Hyde Park, London to mark Phil’s birthday. Think of the artillery discharge as symbolic–& please don’t embarrass yourself by asking, “symbolic of what”?

(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

News

US Congress gives standing ovations to lowlife criminals Modi & Netanyahu

Modi:Netanyahu meme

The corrupt political character of the Democratic & Republican parties is not just manifest in their presidential candidates but in the US Congress–made up of war mongers who vote money for war & for the CIA, support Israeli colonialism & apartheid, sabotage civil rights for Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, & undocumented immigrants, undermine women’s rights, & live on the lobbyist dole.

This brilliant meme nails the suckers.

(Thank you to Sridip Dhar for this)

News

The Sanders capitulation is on!

Sanders

The capitulation has begun. Yesterday banner headlines said Sanders vowed to fight to the Democratic Party convention. Today they declare (after a meeting with Obama) that he vows to work with Clinton for party unity “to defeat Donald Drumpf.”

This is where lesser evil support for Sanders bites the dust. It’s all over but the crying. This is always what it was all about & it’s regrettable so many fall for it over & over again. It’s a conservatism in the American political psyche that cannot break with the vicious cycle of lesser evil politics–although the majority of eligible voters don’t even bother to register, let alone vote.

Sanders functioned like Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jesse Jackson, & so many others before him–like the barker at a circus sideshow to draw in the customers. Ironically, he did not build a political revolution like he claimed but he did expose the profound fault lines of the Democratic Party, its lack of internal democracy, its political machinations, & its complete alienation from the interests of working people in this country & around the world.

As a result of his campaign, the Democratic Party is exposed as a mess when his role was to strengthen it on the high hopes of young people. Feeling berned yet?

News

Obama has swallowed his pride & contempt to endorse Clinton. Who cares? He’s outta here in seven months & has proven himself a complete lying-assed disaster with too many wars to count, too many drone attacks on civilians, & too many deported immigrants.

Roseanne Barr has endorsed Drumpf because she supports his racist views on undocumented immigrants. She should have endorsed Clinton for their mutual hatred of Palestinians & commitment to Israeli colonialism. But again, who cares? She’s gone from pretending she’s a comedic goddess to hate-mongering the oppressed.

News

My presidential candidacy has been disappeared

Meme for women candidates (wrong one)

Socialist Meme Caucus on FB has posted this meme with the names of all the women presidential candidates in the US but has neglected to include my name. I don’t like being erased from history any more than the other women do.

Could campaign supporters (or those who like accuracy in reporting) please go to their wall at https://www.facebook.com/socialistmemecaucus/ & message them, asking them to correct the omission.

https://www.facebook.com/socialistmemecaucus/photos/a.261275940655458.58229.261266100656442/952715454844833/?type=3&theater

News

The Russia & Israel alliance: a devil’s pact at the expense of Syrians

Putin and Netanyahu: EPA:ALEXANDER NEMENOV:POOL

The Russian news agency TASS, owned by the Russian government, posted an article on June 1st titled, “Israel fully supports Russia’s actions to fight terrorism in Syria.”

TASS quoted the Israeli Ambassador to Russia, Zvi Heifetz: “We are not getting involved directly in the operation in Syria. It is clear that we support Russia fully in the fight against international terrorism, against ISIL (former name of the Islamic State terrorist organization banned in Russia).” Heifetzsaid the entire “normal” world supports what Russia is doing: “Russia decided to do something in that regard & it is doing it.”

The article went on to explain that Russian bombers did not break the ceasefire in effect since February 27th because “The ceasefire regime does not cover the Islamic State & Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist organizations as well as other groups ruled terrorist by the Security Council” of the UN. It claims Russian bombers are “delivering pinpoint strikes” on ISIL & al-Nusra facilities at the request of Assad.

Do Russia & Assad include hospitals as ISIL & al-Nusra facilities like Assad apologists do? Can they tell us what & where those facilities are & where those pinpoint bombs are hitting? Is there any “collateral damage,” as militarists like to call civilian deaths? If not them, who does Russia say is dropping those cluster bombs & using white phosphorus? Because if it knows where ISIL & al-Nusra facilities are, it knows what country is competing with it for air space & is guilty of war crimes in Syria.

Photo is Netanyahu & Putin at their April meeting in the Kremlin. Another picture worth a thousand lies. Can Palestinian supporters who support Russian military intervention on behalf of Assad explain this alliance to us without obfuscation?

(Photo from TASS by Alexander Nemenov/EPA/POOL)