Another picture worth a thousand lies:

The media caption said “Israeli forces were called in to disperse Palestinian protestors outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City this morning amid rising tensions following Trump’s announcement.” If they want to tell the truth, the whole truth, & nothing but the truth, media would report that this Israeli soldier is threatening an elderly unarmed Palestinian with an assault rifle outside the Al Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. The whole truth would be that Israeli occupying soldiers make it almost impossible for Palestinians to worship at the mosque but frequently escort rabid Zionist nationalists through the compound.

Long live Palestinian Intifada.

(Photo from AFP/Getty Images)

Over 20 Israeli troops against a blindfolded Palestinian boy in Hebron in the occupied West Bank (yesterday).:

And to think the media narrative is all about Palestinian violence & the threat of another Intifada. Palestinians have the right to resist colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing by any means necessary.

There are protests all over the world standing with Palestinians. Let Intifada go international against the latest US provocation.

(Photo by Wissam Hashiamoun)

The remorseless 85-year-old ex-priest John Feit was found guilty of the murder of Irene Garza in 1960. It was mostly a circumstantial case because a priest from Sacred Heart church had destroyed the physical evidence. Feeling guilt about the complicity, that priest came forward in 2004 but has since died. Twenty-five people gave testimony for the prosecution but the most important was an ex-monk who also came forward in 2004 because Feit confessed to him while being hidden by the diocese. Prosecutors presented evidence that political & church officials obstructed prosecution to protect the church.

Feit was eventually moved from hiding out in a Missouri monastery to a church treatment center for priest sex offenders in New Mexico. They eventually made him the supervisor clearing pervert priests for reassignment to a parish. One of the priests he cleared was Boston child molester James Porter who assaulted over 100 kids before he was prosecuted & sent to prison. After Feit left the priesthood in 1972, the church, heedless of the dangers, hired him to administer a charity where he trained & recruited volunteers.

Today jurors are deliberating over Feit’s sentence. He has never shown any remorse but is in fact extremely insolent. Life in prison for an 85-year-old psychopath is hardly sufficient for justice.

Notice the extensive media coverage of ‘Palestinian violence’ in response to Trump’s provocation. Resistance to occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing is not violence in the moral universe of the oppressed. To my memory, media has expressed no such concern about Israeli violence, including the carpet bombing of Gaza.

This story speaks to the extraordinary spirit of Palestinian resistance to colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing:

https://www.facebook.com/PalStimmeIlmenau/videos/357777264684938/?hc_ref=ARSzv173ppXt-

Reposting this from December 7th, 2016 because it addresses torture of political prisoners in war & occupation. The issue is an old one for the US because of Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo & for Syria because of the horrific Amnesty International report about torture & hanging in Assad’s gulag. It came up most recently because of violent assaults on 18 Kashmiris in Tihar jail in India. Torture & assault of prisoners involves several human rights crimes. Regardless of international law, it remains routine in prisons & there is an entire network of secret torture prisons all over the globe.

The more we are aware of this criminality against political prisoners or even criminal prisoners, the more effectively we can organize to oppose it.

*****

Media reports that these hooded prisoners of war captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan are “suspected ISIS & Taliban fighters” being paraded to media at a press conference by Afghan security forces. The photo accompanies articles on the emergence of ISIS in Afghanistan.

Hooding as a torture technique began under the Gestapo in WWII. It was refined in secret CIA research between 1950 & 1962 which experimented with sensory deprivation like hooding, hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, & sexual humiliation. Out of this program, the CIA developed its interrogation manual to which it has added other techniques like waterboarding. Alfred McCoy has written an important book on this program titled “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror.”

When torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers & CIA operatives at Abu Ghraib prison was exposed in 2004, McCoy explained that the techniques used were not due to psychological perversities of the soldiers involved (at least not solely) but were straight out of the CIA manual. The soldiers were not acting out psycho derangement but were instructed in the techniques.

After the public became aware & outraged at these monstrous practices, which are classified as war crimes, both at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq & at Guantanamo Bay, the US military drafted a new field manual for interrogation procedures which it issued in 2006 under the Bush regime. It was mostly a dog & pony show to appease public outrage since what happens in US torture prisons stays in US torture prisons.

The manual–which is only for the US military & does not alter the CIA manual or practices–lays out what is not allowed in torture: waterboarding, military dogs to terrify or attack prisoners, deprivation of food or water, beatings, electric shock, burns or other forms of physical pain, forcing prisoners to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner, & hooding.

Afghan security forces are trained & armed by the US Pentagon. The only reason Afghan soldiers rather than US soldiers are parading these prisoners in hoods is because the US could be prosecuted for doing so under its own torture guidelines in the 2006 manual.

The US is entirely implicated in this incident which is a war crime. Because of “jihadist” war-mongering language, they think it can be justified for ISIS & Taliban prisoners. Wrong! The humane treatment of prisoners of war is international law from which neither the US nor Afghan military under US direction are exempt.

US out of Afghanistan!

(Photo by Noorullah Shirzada/AFP/Getty Images)

Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the US & Netanyahu’s alter-ego, speaks with an American accent since he was born & raised in Miami. At the age of 46 he has only lived in Israel for 21 years. He’s all over television news lauding Trump’s decision to make Jerusalem the capital saying ‘it has been the capital of Israel for 3,000 years’. Israel was established by force in 1948, which is only 69 years. The Bible is a religious text, not a land deed.

Al Franken resigned & that’s a good thing since at least seven women have accused him of sexual assault. When he denied the charges, claiming the women misunderstood or are lying, he sucked the reality right out of the room & lent credence to the charge that women often falsely accuse. Women have lost nothing by his resignation since women’s rights & freedom will be won by our struggles, not by politician’s grandstanding.

This is 30-year-old Mumtaz Begum, a Rohingya woman suffering physical & psychological trauma from Burmese soldiers raping her & then torching her home. Estimates of the number of Rohingya refugees range between 650,000 to nearly one million. All of them are suffering extreme trauma from the genocidal assault seeing loved ones & neighbors executed in the most unspeakable ways, being raped or witnessing women & children raped, human rights crimes & terror beyond imagination. So when Bangladesh, the UN, & other countries approve the Burmese/Bangladeshi scheme to forcibly repatriate Rohingya refugees to concentration camps under guard by the Burmese military, they are willingly, knowingly sending traumatized Rohingya back so that the generals & Suu Kyi can finish off the dirty work of genocide. No one is unclear about that.

We cannot cease advocating for Rohingya refugee rights. It is a fight that will significantly strengthen the essential international struggle for immigrant & refugee rights from the southern border of the US to the western borders of Europe to the Mediterranean to the borders of Australia.

There can be no decisions about repatriating the Rohingya refugees to Burma without their direct participation in every decision made about their fate.

(Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

Israeli occupying forces at the Al Quds mosque compound are assaulting hundreds of Palestinians protesting Trump’s decision to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

Just wondering: are these women standing unarmed & defiant against Israeli soldiers pointing assault weapons at them the same Muslim women the US claims need to be saved by bombing the hell out of several countries?

Free Palestine. Build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS); buy nothing with barcode beginning 729.

–photo tweeted by DOAM‏ @doamuslims (Documenting Oppression Against Muslims)