Now that Trump is threatening nuclear holocaust with North Korea, will Counterpunch & Black Agenda Report roll back their defense of him?

The two puppies I recently rescued (now about 3 months old) pee & poop all over the house. I don’t hit my animals but am at the end of my rope in training them. Or more aptly, am at a loss not knowing how to train them. My sister suggested I swat their behinds with a newspaper (a tap, not a lambasting) & then put them outside. Does anyone know another way? Or is that a surefire way & not abusive?

I’m rather unforgiving in my polemical style, but I do understand that many Assad supporters are not fascists or libertarians moving toward fascism. But many are Islamophobes or anti-Semites who believe in that Greater Israel crap. A good share of them are confusionists who jump on the bandwagon driven by celebrity journalists & writers.

The problem is that whatever political place you’re coming from, it all ends up the same: facilitating the victory of counter-revolution & dictatorship in Syria & setting back struggles for human freedom, especially the Palestinian struggle. Equivocation about where you stand doesn’t make it any better. Either you stand with democracy & the Syrian revolution or you stand with Assad & dictatorship. War & revolution don’t offer any middle ground.

The Assads are far too chic to be dictators

Bashar & Asma Assad 2010 (MIGUEL MEDINA:AFP:GETTY IMAGES) Aug 7 2017

Bashar & Asma al-Assad at a Claude Monet exhibit in Paris so succinctly place Syrian revolution & counter-revolution in perspective–at least as many Assad supporters understand politics. How could people so stylish & au courant, so western & so secular, & by gosh so damn svelte & pretty possibly be guilty of imprisoning, torturing, & hanging thousands, disappearing thousands, carpet bombing millions of civilians?

Why they’re almost as fashionable as the Obamas–the Barack Obama of six monstrous US wars. Justice in war & revolution is not based on what you wear or how classy you look in Paris but whether you stand for democracy & equality or for dictatorship & oppression.
Stop the Syrian, Russian, US bombing of civilians! All foreign military forces out of Syria now!

(Photo by Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images, 2010)

Believe me, I understand the desire of people around the world to bring down US military might. That is also the commitment of millions of Americans who see the carnage of US militarism at home & abroad. But the alternative is not Russian &/or Chinese military power backing down the US. The alternative is massive international opposition to militarism wherever it comes from. Period.

There are those who don’t understand militarism, who think it can play a progressive, even humanitarian role. Like those who call for a US-imposed No Fly Zone in Syria. Apparently they don’t understand the US commitment to the counter-revolution in Syria. Or they haven’t paid attention to the apocalypse that is Mosul. Or to the horrors in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia–just to name the current US wars.

We all want to see the US Pentagon taken down. But not by Russian or Chinese bombers. Only by the forces of social transformation that consider war & occupation an abomination that humanity must & can overcome if we are to survive. Take all those militaries down.

Heba reunited with her mother in Syria

Heba reunited with her mother (2) August 7 2017

Heba reunites with her mother after 8 months of separation. She had been transferred from Idlib, Syria to Istanbul for treatment of burns all over her body from a Russian airstrike.

Nothing more need be said to condemn the role of Russian bombers in Syria. Except shame on those who defend Russian military intervention & shame on the Hands Off Syria Coalition who promote the bombing of civilians as a freedom struggle.

Every blessing to little Heba for a speedy recovery in the arms of her family.

Stop the Syrian, Russian, US bombing of civilians in Syria. All foreign military forces out now!

Russian tank ( REUTERS:Maxim Shemetov) Aug 7 2017

Poor little Russia. How can it defend itself against all that Russiagate badmouthing with only arsenals of AK-47s, air defense missile systems, fighter jets, & tanks like this baby?

Thank God for the libertarians & Stalinists who render solidarity. What would the world do without such nincompoops?

(Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

US empty threat to cut off aid to Palestinian Authority

Palestinian flag Aug 7 2017

A US Senate committee just approved a bill that would cut off $300 million in annual US aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless it stops paying stipends–which according to Reuters news service can reach US $3,500 a month–to families of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. This might fall into the category of fake news if not outright sarcasm. It’s a political stunt, not a serious proposal.

The PA receives US aid to administer the Oslo Accords as an adjunct to the occupation, for expropriating Palestinians & enforcing the Accords with Palestinian security forces. Those funds will not be cut until that colonial mission is accomplished. You can bet your bottom dollar that PA officials, led by Mahmoud Abbas, are stealing from those funds for personal enrichment. As window dressing, there may be some humanitarian aid for hospitals to treat Palestinians injured by Israeli occupation forces but you’d have to be an idiot to think the PA actually dishes out $3,500 a month to victims of Israeli violence (unless they have a family member within the PA). That’s over three times the average US Social Security check. Who’s kidding who?

It’s wouldn’t be a bad thing at all for Palestinian self-determination if the US severed its payoffs to the PA but it isn’t going to do that. Rest assured. Palestinian liberation will be won by Intifada & massive international solidarity, including BDS, not by compromises, deals, & betrayals.

No to experimentation on living animals

Bat (Nir Elias:Reuters) Aug 9 2017

Reposting this from August 9, 2012 because a bill has just been introduced in the US Congress to stop the Veteran Administration’s medical research on dogs. It’s called the “Preventing Unkind & Painful Procedures & Experiments on Respected Species Act of 2017” or the “PUPPERS Act.”

My opposition to experimenting on live animals started in the 1960s when I saw a dog being experimented on in a lab at the University of Minnesota medical school. The suffering of the dog haunts me till today because I did not rescue it. After they were through torturing it in the name of science, they would leave it kenneled in a dark hallway whimpering in pain & bereavement. To my mind, there are no lower animals like mice, rats, or bats where torturing is allowable. I know the rationalizations offered by scientists & consider them horse manure. We need to use our great big creative minds to find other ways to advance human health not at the expense of torturing other animals.
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Psycho-scientists in a university lab in Tel Aviv are altering this bat’s nose to study changes in the animal’s sonar beam. You can talk till the cows come home about how this kind of experimentation advances science & human knowledge & blah blah blah how it leads to cures for human disease but after all is said & done, it’s crap science based on the torture of small, helpless animals. It won’t cure any diseases or advance aviation but it does increase the disconnect between humans, the natural world, & other living creatures–kind of like psychosis.
(Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)