The Texas attorney general filed a friend of the court brief for Trump’s Muslim-ban court case against Minnesota & Washington. He said those two states are indifferent to immigration problems because they aren’t border states.

Putting aside that immigrants are fleeing the US to Canada to avoid persecution they expect under Trump, what the attorney general means is that Minnesota & Washington aren’t bordering a country where the refugees are brown or black. Either that or he’s too stupid to be attorney general.

Morning news reported that the southern border will be a focus of Trump’s new executive order which may explain why every right-wing politician has been or is scheduled to tour here. There are thousands of refugees from Central America, Haiti, Africa, South Asia encamped all along the border from Texas to California.

These young men are Indian refugees in Mexico hoping to cross to the US. They traveled via the Brazil route taken by tens of thousands of refugees.

(Photo from Reuters)

Some don’t like when I single out individuals for criticism, usually for promoting the Hands Off Syria Coalition or that political perspective. They think it personal, even insulting. If one takes a public stand in support of Assad’s dictatorship & vilifies the Syrian revolution as head choppers, don’t think for one moment the criticism is to offend personally. The sole purpose is to discredit politically. This is a battle for the integrity of international solidarity.

So in that regard, it’s regrettable to point out that the retired FBI & CIA agents, retired military officers & diplomats who became cause célèbres for opposing the Iraq War are almost to the person falling apart over Syria. Most are in the Hands Off Syria Coalition along with Assad propagandists & other compromised political forces. They were more famous for opposing the Iraq War than for their careers in the nefarious institutions of the “Deep State” they now claim run the world.

The whole shebang of them are promoting Tulsi Gabbard & that makes sense. Her support for General Sisi & military dictatorship in Egypt, Modi & casteism in India, Assad & counter-revolution in Syria, & her unabashed Muslim-hating are of a piece. That’s too bad but they probably never did belong in the progressive movement, at least as spokespersons. They never spoke for activists like me.

Alternative media is touted as a reliable source of investigative journalism compared to lying-assed fake MSM. That belief is so strong that RT, Russia’s very own MSM, tries to position itself as alternative media.

Actually, alternative media often, if not usually, has corporate or questionable funding sources. It is also loaded less with sound investigative reporting & more with tendentious propaganda & shoddy journalism. Assad & Putin supporters have an entire industry of this so-called alternative rubbish.

The alternative to fake news is knowing how to use the internet.

Last week, the head of the Indian army threatened Kashmiris who pour into the streets, often in the middle of the night, to interfere with counter-insurgency operations where military forces cordon off an area & begin aggressive home invasions & search operations to find & execute alleged militants.

The army is facing such fearless resistance from Kashmiris in the areas of the operations that he equated unarmed protesters, including women, & stone throwers with “jihadis” & terrorists & said they would be treated as such, including being fired on. The protesters have hampered operations so badly that contingents of paramilitary personnel will be deployed just to keep protesters away from the operation.

Shooting at unarmed protesters is hardly an innovation in the occupation of Kashmir. Thousands have been killed or permanently disabled by live ammunition, pellet guns, tear gas & the threat is unlikely to prevent Kashmiris from coming by the thousands to the defense of their youth. In fact, at a counter-insurgency operation after his threats, protesters showed up & in one instance the military called off the operation due to the resistance.

This is the powerful response of Kashmiri Wasim Khalid to the general’s threats:

“We should be thankful to the Indian Army Chief. He has accepted that people are coming out to protect the rebels. He accepted the current political movement is run by the public who are fighting for right to self determination. He accepted there is no difference between the man with a gun and the man without a gun. Both are same. He accepted Indian army is at war with Kashmir. The only new thing today was that he offically announced a war on Kashmiris. We have been waiting for this announcement from past 70 years. Till now, this war was under wraps of democracy, of “normalcy and peace,” of imposed leaders who were mere puppets of tourism, of sadhbhavna, of “development and progress” and so on. Today, he lifted the veil. We are at war with the India.

It happened only because of peoples movement on the ground. What Indian army cheif did actually was that he vented his frustration in the public. He has realized his clutches on the ground are not firm. He knows he has utilized all options. First time, I believe, the world’s third largest army is under pressure and helpless before the tiny oppressed people of Kashmir.

So if people tell you what 2016 uprising gave you; ask them we have defeated the morale of the third largest army of the world. They have realised that they are unwanted in Kashmir.”

Indian media reporting on the general’s threats only showed file photos of small groups of young stone-throwers when the protests terrifying the Indian army are large & also filled with women & men, not just youth.

(Photo from files is Kashmiri youth protesters from The Telegraph)

These are photos of the severe flooding in Gaza which is compounding problems caused by over a decade of Israeli bombing assaults. Many photos show people knee-deep in water in the middle of bomb-damaged living quarters like the little girl here. The other overview photo shows the number of living quarters without roofs. According to the UN, just in the 7-week Israeli bombing offensive in 2014, over 171,000 homes suffered damage; 19,000 of them were either completely destroyed or severely damaged. Schools, businesses, hospitals & clinics, water & sanitation facilities, Gaza’s only power plant, communication networks were also damaged or reduced to rubble.

Over one year later, 100,000 people still remained displaced living in prefabricated units, tents, makeshift shelters, or in the rubble of their homes. The UN reported that construction work had begun on half of the 19,000 completely destroyed or heavily damaged but by the end of 2015 only one had been completed. As of July 2016, only 3,000 homes were made habitable & 75,000 people were still without permanent shelter. Most have been unable to rebuild their homes because of the labyrinth of impediments put up by the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Under the blockade, Israel monitors & controls all building materials (as well as medicines, foods, etc.) entering Gaza. Israel disallows many materials necessary for reconstruction, claiming they could be used by Hamas for military purposes or to rebuild the tunnels (which Israel destroyed in 2014) used to smuggle goods into Gaza which are banned under the blockade.

The World Bank monitors the international pledges to rebuild Gaza made at the Cairo conference in October 2014, the contributions are channeled through the Palestinian Authority & from there dispersed to the UN refugee agency, apparently to Israel for fuel, & elsewhere. It cannot be said the process has much transparency or accountability. But the World Bank reports that of the USD $3.5 billion pledged to reconstruction in Gaza, only about half has been received from the countries pledging–about $1.4 billion. How much, to which agencies, or even if that has been expended on reconstruction is not well accounted for. It’s likely grand larceny at the expense of the Palestinians is involved just like in such programs elsewhere, most egregiously in Afghanistan & Haiti.

The biggest problem according to the World Bank & UN is the defaults on pledges. One UN official claimed the resolution to reconstruction problems was reconciliation between the Palestinian factions of Hamas & Fatah & for the Palestinian Authority to resume control of Gaza. It’s beyond dispute that the biggest problem is Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza & the continuing blockade which denies necessities of life, including housing, & according to the UN will make Gaza uninhabitable in 2020.

(Photos by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

There is never a moment in Trump’s tenure that one can say “now I’ve seen everything.” Melania Trump led the Florida rally in the Lord’s Prayer with the orange freak standing next to her, his raccoon eyes beaming with approval. What next in the festival of reactionary idiocy?

I liked Glenn Greenwald better when he actually knew what he was talking about. Since he achieved guru stature they expect him to be an encyclopedic commentator. Regrettably, he doesn’t have the modesty to admit he doesn’t have a clue about a lot of issues so he improvises & argues discombobulated or opposing positions at the same time.

In a Democracy Now interview titled “Empowering the “Deep State” to Undermine Trump is Prescription for Destroying Democracy,” he makes a mockery of political analysis. He has no idea how capitalist governments work but that doesn’t stop him from tooting from the nether regions about Trump, Russia & the alleged US proxy war in Syria. He’s a classic libertarian bullshit artist.

His ignorance doesn’t excuse him. On the contrary, a responsible guru, or even just an honest journalist, would attempt to understand an issue deeply before operating as an authority. That’s beyond him.

This is the lead banner of over 160,000 protesters who marched in Barcelona, Catalonia yesterday demanding the Spanish government take in more refugees in response to the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean with thousands of refugees drowning.

The banner reads “Enough excuses! Welcome them now!” Other banners said “Refugees welcome.” A Catalan movement named “Our Home, Your Home” representing 300 associations, NGOs, cultural groups, & citizens sponsored the march. They marched from the Barcelona city center to the Mediterranean coast as a symbolic act of protest against the thousands of refugees allowed to drown.

Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona who was among the protesters, said the protest was sending a clear message to the European Union that “the current EU policies don’t represent us; we want to welcome refugees”. She said Barcelona will a “city capital of hope, humanity & ethics” to counter the racist & xenophobic response elsewhere in Europe.

Spain has only accepted 516 of the 10,500 refugees proposed for the country by the European Union, to be completed in two years. Barcelona has initiated its own hosting program to accept thousands of refugees.

This is what humanity looks like. This is what solidarity looks like.

So is Bowling Green in Sweden? Was there another massacre there? Is this a “Je suis Sweden” moment? Or another one of Trump’s screw-ups?