Media is reporting it was a rare apology. Of course it is. The US negotiated & bullied Afghanistan for months into a bilateral security agreement exempting its personnel from prosecution for war crimes. The only reason Obama apologized for this war crime is because he got nailed by the authoritative MSF & couldn’t weasel his way out.

This bombing follows on revelations that between 2012-13, Green Beret operatives in Afghanistan tortured, disappeared, & murdered 17 Afghan civilians whose bodies were uncovered outside the US military base after the Green Berets were driven out of the area by protests against the murders. No apology has been forthcoming.

There was also no apology in 2012 when Robert Bales, a US soldier massacred 16 Afghan civilians; nor for the mass murder of 800 surrendered Taliban in 2001 when US bombers pummeled their prison for three days; nor for the mass murder of at least 1,500 surrendered Taliban prisoners suffocated to death in closed metal shipping containers & later dumped in mass graves; nor for Bagram, the infamous prison the CIA operates for purposes of torture. These are the best known incidents but barbarism is the nature of high-tech war.

There’s no apologizing for these crimes. They’re too monstrous, too unspeakable. Obama is made of the same moral sewage as Kissinger & Netanyahu. That’s why the most imperative need is to re-build the international antiwar movement, a movement that can organize war crime tribunals to hold these monsters accountable.

No US war in Afghanistan! No US war in Iraq! Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO personnel including their mercenary forces. Out now!

(Photo of Obama should be a mug shot)

For those who would defend the shameful USSR occupation, they dropped thousands of cluster munitions that looked like toy butterflies. When children chased them in delight, hundreds were blown up or disabled. That’s not liberation; it’s barbarism. That’s the thing about land mines–they don’t discriminate & children are as often victims as seniors.

An interesting thing about the Associated Press (AP) caption to this photo is the comment, “More than 500,000 people have arrived in the European Union this year seeking sanctuary or jobs.” The AP think they’re being foxy here by running interference for the EU which is already beginning to separate out political from economic refugees. Those determined to be the latter will be denied asylum & deported. Since the distinction is completely fallacious, not to mention despicable, many fleeing from war like the fellows here may be deported. Nobody crosses over 4000 km on a prosthetic leg just looking for a job.

Immigration is a human right! Open the damn borders! End the US-NATO war in Afghanistan!

(Photo by Santi Palacios/AP)

This rampage is a provocation to Palestinians so Israel can justify coming down with the full force of their arsenal on unarmed Palestinians to destroy political resistance to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, incarceration & torture in the gulag, the blockade of Gaza, & dispossession.

Emergency rallies are imperative along with building the economic, cultural, & economic boycott of Israel (BDS) & demanding no aid of any kind to apartheid Israel.

(Photo byAhmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)

Immigration is a human right! Open the damn borders!

(Photo by Andrew Medichini/AP)

The deepening alliance between Israel & India is not coincidental at all; nor is the growing alliance between Israel & the Myanmar regime which is engaged in the brutal ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

When we do educational work to build solidarity with Palestine, we can yoke these other struggles (through inviting speakers from them) in the spirit of solidarity & help to bring them out of the shadows where so many violent human rights crimes are perpetrated.

No one believed Palestinians could sustain such barbarism, could take such a pounding & endure such losses & grief for so long without being utterly defeated, all resistance bombed to smithereens. But then images began to appear of Palestinians standing in cement rubble waving the flag with Israeli bombers still prowling overhead. Those were hallelujah moments at a gruesome time–that the spirit of Intifada had survived such an onslaught.

Their struggle is important for many reasons–not least of which is their intransigent refusal, generation after generation, to bend the knee to colonialism though they surely must be exhausted by the relentless aggression & terrible losses they have endured.

After 67 years of colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, & being vilified as terrorists, the Palestinian call for the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel (BDS), has broken the barriers of international solidarity so they are no longer isolated. The truth is out & we must render a powerful solidarity that takes the spirit of Intifada international.

This young protester is holding the Palestinian flag during assaults–what media calls “clashes”–by the Israeli military at the contentious Qalandia checkpoint near Ramallah in the West Bank. Another hallelujah moment.

Our fullest solidarity & respect. Build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel & demand no aid of any kind to apartheid Israel.

(Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)

Earlier this year, the government reduced social service benefits to refugees & new regulations, which go into effect on October 15th, make it more arduous to become a citizen, including financial self-sufficiency, language requirements, current affairs tests, & other gratuitous obstacles.

Media has been reporting that Danes oppose refugees because they ‘refuse to assimilate & insist on special rules’; because their ‘Scandinavian way of life is threatened by Muslim asylum seekers who refuse to learn Danish & stay in isolated communities refusing to embrace European values.’ They also report public concerns about increased crime–the usual malarkey used against immigrants & refugees in every country & malarkey that’s been disproved by hundreds of studies going back nearly a century, though that doesn’t stop the fear-mongers.

This march is a direct rebuke to all that & a sign that while “something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” among working people there is another dynamic operating.

Hats off to Danish working people.

(Photo by Soeren Bidstrup/Reuters/Scanpix Denmark)

Since the power plant has been damaged in successive Israeli bombing sieges, it only operates a few hours a day–insufficient for the sanitation infrastructure–which has created a full-blown sanitation crisis in Gaza. In many places there are open pools of sewage which flow in the streets during rain. Many respiratory & infectious diseases are associated with raw sewage, especially for people stressed to the max & deprived of proper food & health care by Israel’s blockade of Gaza. That’s why the UN says Gaza could become uninhabitable in the next five years.

Nothing damns Israel–& for that matter the US who arms & bankrolls this, the UN who alibis this, the EU & India for sanctioning this, Egypt & Jordan for being part of this–more than the continued bombing & blockade of Gaza. It’s created an emergency situation & makes it imperative we respond with increased efforts to expose this, to build BDS, & to mobilize to demand no aid of any kind to apartheid Israel.

Our fullest solidarity with the people of Gaza.

(Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)