They still don’t have forensics from the terrible fire at Notre Dame but there is a groundswell on social media blaming it on Muslims. Why not? Using their same method of jumping to conclusions based on hatred of Muslims, they could find direct connections between Islam & halitosis, adult-onset diabetes, or male-pattern baldness. It’s all there in the Quran which few of these fools have read.
Monthly Archives: April 2019
Fox News is running an appeal to raise money for poor Israelis & the images are quite distressing, like images from a ‘third-world’ country. The ad cites the reason as terrorism but that doesn’t explain how apartheid & genocide have created so many elderly poor people in Israel. Likely it’s the same problem that a bloated military budget causes in the US where there’s always enough money for war but none for social security & the poor must go begging.
Cultural fusion: Hungarians inspired by Monty Python.
https://www.facebook.com/BBCOne/videos/2248186188763030/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTYzNjY5MTAxNTg0MjU/
The US war in Afghanistan is now the longest US war: going on 18 years. The few war crimes we know about are too gruesome to describe. The Pentagon & State Department don’t want us to know the scale of war crimes from torture, massacres, indiscriminate carpet bombing so they barred the ICC investigator from getting a visa.
The corrupted antiwar movement is up to its eyeballs campaigning for the Assad regime & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians & hasn’t been able to mobilize against the wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, or for that matter, Syria. Some anti-Assadists choose to ignore other US wars & the entire history of US militarism & call for a humanitarian US bombing campaign in Syria. Drawing from the cesspool of Orientalism, they say ‘Syrians want US intervention so how can anyone disagree?’ After asking which Syrians do not understand US militarism, we can answer that the most compelling reason for scorning the very notion of a humanitarian bombing campaign is that it is Syrian civilians who will die & American young people who are turned into trained killers, who lose their psychological bearings, who commit war crimes, lose their lives & limbs, come home to suicide, homelessness, PTSD, incarceration, brain damage, disability, psychological misery.
How did it happen that so many took their distance from the realities of war & begin to glorify it as liberation against a ‘regime change operation’ or as humanitarian? How did the principles against war get so twisted into service to war mongering? How can we begin to rebuild the antiwar movement rooted in principles, not of pacifism, but of opposition to colonial wars?
Mehbooba Mufti has moved from being India’s Chief Minister over Kashmir to stand-up comedy. Here she asks “What wrong I did that stones were pelted?” Shall we present her with the staggering figures of injuries just from pellet guns alone? Ignore her tears. She had none for those disfigured, disabled, blinded, & killed by pellet guns.
It used to be common on my wall (but since I have ungraciously discouraged it, it is less common) that people want to debate the ethnicity of Jews & parse the legitimacy of the term ‘anti-Semitic.” Like the term ‘Islamophobia’, it is not the best term but regardless, it is the term we are bequeathed to describe the phenomenon that led to pogroms, persecution, & the holocaust. In that regard, it’s as weak as ‘Islamophobia’ for the persecution, pogroms, genocides against Muslims. The etymology of these terms is a matter of scholarship but their popular usage is something we’re stuck with until someone comes up with more powerful terms to describe the scale of criminality & violence against Muslims & Jews.
As for the ethnicity of Jews, my observation is that those who engage in that discussion are the same people who blither about the Greater Israel Plan, post memes about the Rothschild bankers, & are often disciples of David Icke who believe the world is run by shape-shifting extraterrestrials morphed into Jewish bankers called the Illuminati. That discussion will not be held on my wall. The ethnic heritage of Jews is of little interest to me since most of the human race is ethnically diverse & all of us are related. The reason I won’t engage in those discussions is because they lend themselves to anti-Jewish vituperations. My issues about Israel will never be about Jews, whatever their ethnicity. It is solely about the hold of Zionism, an ideology held by all sorts of ethnic, national, & religious groups.
This is Rollie Mukherjee’s portrait of B.R. Ambedkar (14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956). He was an extraordinary figure in Indian history who should be known as well as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Sojourner Truth, Che Guevara, Maqbool Bhat, & others of such remarkable character.
He was born into the Dalit (untouchable) caste & went on to become a scholar, jurist, economist, politician, journalist, & social reformer. He campaigned for Indian independence from Britain, advocated political rights & social equality for Dalits & other oppressed castes, supported the rights of women & of labor. He was the architect of India’s constitution & a founding figure in the Republic of India.
Out of all his achievements, he will be most honored for the role he continues to play in inspiring the struggle of Dalits against caste oppression.
It’s heartbreaking to watch Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in a raging fire. They began building it in 1163 CE, 852 years ago. Just consider all the extraordinary & ancient buildings completely destroyed by US-coalition bombers only in the past 18 years. Human history, the very best of human achievement, obliterated along with millions of human lives.
Two young women I know are working their way through college doing pizza delivery. Little did I know that they must pay for their own gas & so rely on tips. Worse yet, little could I imagine that many people order pizza delivery & don’t give a dime in tips. I told the two women that I would post an appeal to tip the pizza delivery person & not be cheap about it. But then I cannot imagine that any of my friends would even consider not being generous.
Many are circulating a news report that an Israeli general is behind the military coup that ousted Morsi & replaced him with direct military rule under General Sisi. This is nothing but anti-Semitic rubbish & conspiracy mongering. The article was written by a leading fascist named Whitney Webb (who comes from the LaRouche network), was published by the pro-Iranian theocracy & Assadist propaganda site Mint Press, & circulated by Alison Weir on her If Americans Knew blog. Weir is deeply problematic politically because she attended the New Horizons conference in Iran which is a gathering of the world’s leading fascists, holocaust deniers & other anti-Semites, 9/11 truthers & other conspiracy whack jobs. She is either anti-Semitic or has a massive cognitive disconnect. Who of us could convene for days with such political trash?
To my mind, the coup against Morsi is one of the most misunderstood events in the Egyptian Arab Spring & signals its defeat. It divides those who understood the military character of rule behind the Morsi regime from those who fetishize rigged elections as the highest expression of popular rule. The military pulled an end run around the Egyptian revolution which at the time of the coup saw an estimated 30 million people in the streets demanding Morsi’s removal. Most analyses treat those protesters as of no consequence compared to the rigged elections which put Morsi in power.
We should debate this event to bring clarity to it. But it is not necessary to render anything but contempt to Webb’s rabid hatred that sees evil Jews hiding behind everything. What makes his assertion even more repugnant is that he & his ilk opposed all of the Arab Spring uprisings as orchestrated by the CIA & Mossad. We see the full fruition of their political derangement in their support for the Assad regime against the Arab Spring.