It’s true that if Trump gets dumped he’ll be replaced by Pence who is just a less vulgar version of Australopithecine fascist. But the fact that he’s higher on the evolutionary scale–at least a step or two after the split from the chimpanzees–does make the next four years less like a descent into hell.
Monthly Archives: February 2017
This is so much fun. The wild & crazy Norwegians.
https://www.facebook.com/breathingforpeace/videos/1194071323959864/?pnref=story
Palestinian kids protest impunity for Elor Azaria who executed wounded Palestinian
Palestinian kids protesting the 18-month sentence for the Israeli soldier who extrajudicially executed 21-year-old Abd Elfatah Ashareef on March 2016. This impunity is a contrast to the sentence a Palestinian boy can get for throwing a stone–up to 20 years in military prison.
Palestinian Ahmad Manasra was convicted last November of two counts of attempted murder & sentenced to 12 years in prison for a stabbing attempt on two Israelis when he was 13. Young Ahmad had not actually stabbed anyone. The young boy with him who did was shot dead on the spot.
Israeli Meir Ettinger, designated a terrorist by Israeli police officials, was arrested in 2015 for leading others in a firebomb attack on the home of a Palestinian family in the West Bank. An 18-month-old boy, his mother & father died in the fire. A surviving 4-year-old boy was burned over 60 percent of his body, is still undergoing medical treatment, & has been orphaned.
Ettinger was not charged with a crime & was released after ten months with a curfew, a ban from entering the West Bank or East Jerusalem for one year, & barred from contacting his terrorist cohorts for six months. The equivalent of the naughty finger for murdering Palestinians sleeping in their beds & causing lifelong physical & psychological suffering to a child.
Such is the “justice” of military occupation & colonialism. Use your indignation to build BDS: support the cultural boycott & the economic boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729.
(Photographer unidentified)
Vitaly Churkin should have stuck to acting
Requiems abound for Vitaly Churkin, the former child star who became a Russian diplomat in the USSR era & was savvy enough to move seamlessly from Brezhnev to Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Putin–all of whom had that certain je ne sais quoi that makes a thug.
His final days were as permanent Russian ambassador to the UN where he defended Russian carpet bombing of Syrian civilians & ran interference for Assad’s use of barrel bombs & chemical weapons. He claimed the evidence for the use of chemical weapons might have been falsified by terrorists.
He reportedly had a gift with language which he certainly would have needed to cover all the criminal territory he did in the past 43 years. He should of stuck with movies.
Iraqi army committing war crimes in “liberation” of Mosul
The “liberation” of east Mosul: last month, US & Iraqi coalition forces announced they had liberated the eastern part of Mosul & the surrounding villages from ISIS fighters.
It’s a peculiar war model with an estimated 5,000 ISIS fighters fighting urban guerrilla warfare against nearly 110,000 regular troops, paramilitary forces, & substantial US airpower. Even though the US coalition now claims control of east Mosul, ISIS continues to conduct drone strikes in the area launched from its base in the western part of the city. Who is supplying those drones & the explosives attached to them & how are they delivering them to ISIS fighters in west Mosul past the cordon of US, Peshmerga, & Iraqi forces surrounding the city?
When tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing from the fighting & bombing during the offensive against ISIL in the eastern part of Mosul, Amnesty International & Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued reports condemning how Iraqi & coalition forces were committing war crimes by screening, arbitrarily detaining, torturing, forcibly disappearing & extrajudicially executing thousands of civilian men & boys suspected of collaboration with ISIS. Videos also appeared on pro-Iraq army FB sites showing Iraqi soldiers abusing & striking children & shooting down civilians in the streets as suspected collaborators with ISIS.
This photo is Iraqi soldiers in “liberated” east Mosul searching civilian men & checking their ID cards “in a search for ISIS fighters.” Do they think ISIS is hiding out in their underwear? But they aren’t searching for ISIS or its collaborators. This is not a liberation. It is an occupation, just like the Syrian & Russian military occupation of east Aleppo. Civilians complained to Amnesty & HRW that they couldn’t tell the difference between repression under ISIS & under US-Iraq coalition forces. Isn’t that a mouthful of condemnation.
US out of Iraq & Syria! The immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military operatives is the only principled antiwar demand.
(Photo by Khalid al Mousily/Reuters)
Trump has unleashed such noisy rancor that one might think the US a hellhole of hatred & intolerance. Misanthropes might say so but how do they explain that protests continue across the country against all of Trump’s policies, especially his immigration bans?
When a mosque burned down in Texas last month, the local Christian & Jewish communities offered their facilities till the mosque was rebuilt with the over $1 million in donations received. When a Jewish cemetery was vandalized just days ago, Muslim activists initiated a fund drive which has now raised over $77,000.
Nothing’s perfect. But those protests & acts of solidarity sure come close.
Trump be damned! No human being is illegal.
Israeli soldier gets the naughty finger for extrajudicial execution of Palestinian
An Israeli soldier convicted of involuntary manslaughter by a military court in the shooting of a Palestinian was sentenced today to 18 months in prison. On March 24, 2016, Elor Azaria was deployed to Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. In an encounter between two Palestinians & Israeli soldiers, one Palestinian was shot dead & an Israeli soldier & the other Palestinian, 21-year-old Abd Elfatah Ashareef, were wounded. There is no need to play stupid & accept the accusation that the injured soldier was stabbed & wounded by the two Palestinians.
As several soldiers stood around watching the wounded soldier be put into an ambulance, Abd Elfatah Ashareef laid motionless on the ground nearby for several minutes, completely unattended by medics although obviously wounded. Out of the blue, Azaria walked up & shot him in the head, saying to a nearby soldier “He deserves to die.” That is called extrajudicial execution.
Despite giving Azaria such a lenient sentence the court said he had taken upon himself to be both judge & executioner. That is called impunity. They also said he had not expressed regret for his crime. That is called sociopathology, the psychological disorder derived from impunity.
The solidarity response to this monstrous miscarriage of justice is first to tell the world about the character of Israeli justice for Palestinians, because although Palestinians are not taught to hate, they have every reason to do so, & second to build the hell out of the Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement (BDS). Buy nothing with the barcode beginning 729.
On the left is Elor Azaria with his mother at the sentencing hearing in Tel Aviv where he is already showing the symptoms of impunity.
On the right is Abd Elfatah Ashareef. May he Rest In Peace.
(Photo of Azaria by Jim Hollander/Pool/Reuters)
Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day on February 23rd
Thursday, February 23rd, is commemorated as Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day, a now annual event which is part of the campaign demanding justice from the Indian government for the 1991 mass rape & torture by occupying soldiers in the villages of Kunan & Poshpora, Kashmir. It was not a case of undisciplined troops on a rampage but an orchestrated, calculated military operation.
Kashmiris have long endured extreme, unimaginable violence in their struggle against occupation. For so long they stood alone, vilified by the Indian government as terrorists, because there was almost no reporting about their struggle in international media. Kashmiri activists on social media have changed all that by campaigning to have their story told.
It’s an extraordinary testimony to humanity’s demand for freedom that Kashmiris, like Palestinians, have fought so long against such insuperable odds with so little support. Now that we know the violence they endure & the justice of their cause, it is imperative to begin forming the battalions of solidarity by participating with them in these events & telling others far & wide about the importance of their freedom struggle.
It’s a simple act of solidarity to like & share this page for an event commemorating Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day. It doesn’t matter that you can’t be there but that you let others know about it.
MSNBC is openly campaigning to dump Trump under Article 25 of the Constitution on the grounds of mental instability. What happened to the treason charges?