This photo is the apartheid wall at Qalandia, a village in the occupied West Bank near but not bordering Jerusalem. There is a large refugee camp built there in 1949 for Palestinians driven from their lands & homes by Zionist paramilitary squads. According to one UN statistic, over 10,000 people still live there.

The main Israeli military checkpoint for entering Jerusalem is at Qalandia & because it is such a nightmare of pedestrian & vehicular traffic, rubbish, & hassles from border guards, it is the scene of frequent Palestinian protests & altercations between frustrated Palestinians & aggressive border patrol. Today Mohammad Kosba, a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager was shot & killed by Israeli soldiers allegedly for throwing rocks at an Israeli military vehicle & denting it. There have reportedly been several violent altercations since Ramadan began which media has not reported–except those few instances where a Palestinian was the alleged perpetrator.

To cross, Israel requires Palestinians to have permits for work, medical care, education, or religious reasons. They abridged religious permits due to closing down Al-Aqsa mosque to males under 50 years old which is why there are many photos of young Palestinians queued up to scale ladders to cross the wall for prayers in the public streets surrounding Al-Aqsa. Israel took advantage of recent altercations to revoke permits for Palestinians living in the West Bank to visit family in Gaza & even further limit access to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Scaling the apartheid wall isn’t possible for elderly or infirm Palestinian men. These men are making their way to Al-Aqsa along the apartheid wall near Qalandia village.

Support religious freedom for Palestinians in occupied West Bank & build BDS, the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel.

(Photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA)

Let me play Nostradamus for a moment: Donald Trump will soon announce his withdrawal from the presidential race due to a brain-eating amoeba that caused him to say stupid, racist, xenophobic things about Mexicans. He hopes thereby to salvage what little street cred he has left among other halfwits.

But his empire tumbles around his dumb ass. After Univision & NBC dumped him, his misogynist pageants, & the Celebrity Apprentice, Macy’s (where he sells a line of vulgar & flashy men’s clothing & jewelry) & Serta also dumped him. Costa Rica, Mexico, & Bogota pulled out of the Miss Universe pageant; performers & the two cohosts pulled out of the July 12th Miss USA pageant.

Adios amigo! Don’t let the door hit your dumb ass on the way out. And wipe that smug look off your face.

Researchers at the University of Vermont conclude that those with blue eyes are more prone to alcoholism. So glad they cleared that up. We won’t ask why they were looking at such an inane connection but we would like to ask, “Now what?” Or should the question be “So what?”

The feudal trappings & homage given to some religious figures don’t appeal to me but they’re not of concern to me. When they start talking politics, that does interest me. Like when Pope Francis remains silent on ethnic cleansing in Gaza while schmoozing with the Israeli president. Or when the Dalai Lama talks about compassion & love for humanity & then pays tribute & hangs out with George W. Bush, the man who lied the US into the Iraq War.

On two occasions now–once in a 2012 interview with Piers Morgan & yesterday at the G.W. Bush presidential center in Dallas, TX–the Dalai Lama expressed personal love for Bush but only “reservations” about his barbaric & murderous war against Iraq.

It was a regular little love-fest yesterday between the Dalai Lama & Bush–a man most of humanity wants prosecuted for the hell he created for the Iraqi people. It’s a slippery slope the Dalai Lama is on: do we personally love Hitler, Stalin, Omar Suleiman (the torturer), Pinochet, Netanyahu, Kissinger, Mubarak, Sisi, et al, & just have “reservations” about their unspeakable crimes? Does criminality on such a scale mean nothing?

So it turns out Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief leading the austerity campaign against Greek working people (targeting pensions in particular), doesn’t pay taxes on her annual salary of $467,940 (£298,675) plus $83,760 additional allowance a year. Her benefits include rent subsidies, dependency allowances for spouses & children, education grants for school-age children, travel & shipping expenses, subsidized medical insurance, pay raises every July 1st. There’s no info on the salary & benefits of Angela Merkel, the EU agent of destruction in Greece, but her net worth is nearly $12 million.

Shocking indeed, but the modus operandi also of multinational corporations, the agencies of neoliberal plunder. At least 26 Fortune 500 corporations in the US pay no income taxes, including General Electric, General Motors (bailed out by US taxpayers), Boeing, ConEdison, Merck the pharmaceutical giant, Verizon, PG&E, Newmont Mining (involved in controversial copper & gold mines in Peru involving human rights abuses & environmental destruction).

Merkel & Lagarde are only two representatives of international capital putting the screws on working people–& not just in Greece. They’re not exactly what the women’s movement had in mind when it fought for female liberation. But they’re certainly proof positive that treachery is not a gender-based phenomenon.

(Caricature from caricaturecrichard blog spot)

One of the land routes being walked by refugees from Africa & the Middle East is north from Greece to Hungary–about 700 miles (1,127 kilometers). They will have to get past the razor wire barrier wall Hungary built on the border with Serbia in the idiotic hopes of thwarting thousands of immigrants. These fellows are hitching a train traveling north from Gevgelija on the Macedonian-Greek border.

Modern immigration/refugee crises are tsunamic in proportion, with hundreds of thousands of people in movement. It’s regrettable there are only a handful of photojournalists to document the social history. Many historians don’t find working people interesting but those who have taken time to listen & report individual refugee stories have chronicled the extraordinary sacrifices of seemingly ordinary people to provide for their families; of unaccompanied children to reunite with parents who immigrated; of families to escape war, poverty, & tyranny. We don’t know the stories of these young men. We only wish them Godspeed on their journey.
Immigration is a human right. Open the borders!

(Photo by Robert Atanasovski/AFP/Getty Images)

You can learn a lot watching Elizabeth Warren in action–especially about evasion & equivocation. She says it’s too early to endorse Bernie Sanders for president but she just loves his rhetoric & the way he blows smoke up our butts. Well she didn’t put it that way but you always have to interpret equivocators since talking straight isn’t their forte.

Bernie Sanders doesn’t represent lesser evil politics so much as he does a messiah vision of politics, the hope that somebody will come along & make the system fair. The system is too far gone for that. But when you want to assess Sanders–or Warren, for that matter–you have to ask what is their stand on Palestine & Israel? And they both stink.

Why does that matter fundamentally & not in a secondary way? Because it raises all the problems of neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism: colonialism; occupation; land theft; apartheid; ethnic cleansing; incarceration of children & political opponents of occupation; no due process for prisoners; torture; the fate of refugees; militarism; US & European control over entire regions of the world like the Middle East & Africa.

If all that is okay with Sanders & Warren for Israel against Palestinians, then where do they draw the line? And where do we? Are they exempt from the iron law of social transformation that “an injury to one is an injury to all” just because they talk a good game?

Despite massive protests in cities across Spain for months, the regime has installed a new security law criminalizing protests. It’s a sweeping, draconian law that does more than silence opposition to the EU-IMF austerity policies but is a frontal assault on civil liberties & democracy.

Activists are given steep fines for protests in front of government buildings; fines for obstructing police officers evicting families & seniors from public housing sold to private investors; fines for taking photos of police engaged in abusive behavior; fines for showing lack of respect for police; the homeless & prostitutes will be fined; & immigrants & refugees will be returned to Morocco without the due process required by international law.

The provisions may be indistinguishable from Spanish fascism but they are rooted in the juridical demands of neoliberal control & are not unique to Spain. Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allows the regime to brand someone a belligerent, ignore due process, & apply Guantanamo justice by simply kidnapping & incarcerating them. It’s the legal model Israel applies in occupied Palestine, India in Kashmir, Mexico & other regimes for political dissidents, the US in the Black community.

Protest is now militarized; riot cops around the world confront seniors & people in tee-shirts & sandals with water cannons, grenades, tear gas, high-powered weapons, & armored vehicles. The style of fascism & storm troopers has become the norm. Despite the military aggression, people by the millions are protesting but have not been able to drive back this assault on democratic rights. And driving it back to the barracks is absolutely essential if we want to end tyranny.

What is the way forward? That is what working people need to think out. The answer includes organization, choosing uncompromising leadership, a willingness to work with anyone, refusing to buckle to any form of social hatred, & building international solidarity. Because if these regimes cannot tolerate democracy & equality, then these regimes will have to be replaced. Human beings were not put on this earth to serve profit for the few & misery for the many.

Our fullest solidarity with the activists of Spain who have not blanched from protest despite the new law. This protester is marching in Madrid.

(Photo by Andres Kudacki/AP)

The Freedom Flotilla III to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza was intercepted by the Israeli navy. The lead Swedish boat called the Marianne of Gothenburg was hijacked & escorted to an Israeli port; the other three boats turned back rather than risk assault by Israeli commandoes. Such an assault on the 2010 flotilla caused the deaths of nine activists after commandoes boarded the ships. Israel has not been held to account for those murders.

Activists on the flotillas have received some criticism for attempting to break the blockade when Israel just marshals its entire diplomatic corps, propaganda officials, & navy to thwart the boats. They threaten Greek & Turkish officials with repercussions on economic, political, & military relations; they talk up a storm about flotilla activists aiding & abetting Hamas; & finally, they commandeer the ships to prevent them landing.

Since Israel pulled Zionist settlers out of Gaza in 2005, it has been setting up Gaza as a target zone with total control over the borders by air, land, & sea. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out without Israel’s agreement–including vital needs like medicine. Egypt, acting as henchman for Israel, sealed up the smuggling tunnels once used to bring in essential goods. The Israeli navy allows Palestinian fishermen to use only three nautical miles of sea instead of the 20 nautical miles allowed by the ill-fated Oslo Accord.

With no settlers left in Gaza, the Israeli military uses heavy artillery, drones, carpet bombing in periodic murderous sieges over Gaza. This isn’t just an outdoor prison system; it’s more a system for shooting fish in a barrel. That’s called barbarism.

The flotillas have never gotten past the Israeli navy to bring supplies to Gaza. But Israel’s hysterical opposition to bringing bandaids, medicines, & solar panels to Gaza says everything you need to know about Israel’s political intentions & the value of the flotillas. It isn’t just the exposure of the Israeli blockade that’s important–though it’s necessary to isolate Israel internationally & build the boycott movement. Palestinian supporters in the growing solidarity & boycott (BDS) movement around the world want the people of Gaza to know they are not alone, that there’s a huge social movement emerging in their defense, that the truth of Israeli apartheid is out, & that justice is on the move. The daring initiative of the flotillas has been part of standing steadfast with Palestinians.

This is a photo of Palestinians in the port of Gaza waving the national flag during a rally in support of the flotilla. If the flotillas continue to be turned back, there is no recourse for justice but to build the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott (BDS) of Israel.

Hats off to the activists on the Freedom Flotilla. Hats off to the Palestinian activists. Our fullest solidarity with the people of Gaza.

(Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

These young men are immigrants picked up by a Belgian naval vessel just off the Libyan coast in what the European Union (EU) euphemistically calls “a search & rescue mission” as part of naval operations to stop immigration from Africa. We should be grateful they still feel constrained from torpedoing immigrant boats since they did not hesitate for years to let thousands drown.

Libya is such a hell of a mess after the US-NATO war that the air force commander of one of Libya’s two governments warned the EU that vessels entering Libyan waters without permission would be hit with air strikes. But with two rival regimes & two opposing armies in Libya, who does the EU get permission from? The regime they recognized because they thought they could bargain with it? Or the other one? So much for emancipation US-NATO style!

The EU is hiding its assault on immigrants by claiming it’s to combat “people-traffickers”–as though it were a sophisticated smuggling operation rather than primarily fishermen. In order to operate in Libyan waters without permission, the EU has appealed to the UN for one of its Security Council resolutions–the kind it uses to legitimize all sorts of atrocities. But the UN can’t figure out which Libyan regime to let the EU bomb.

That means the EU for now feels some constraint & isn’t bombing the immigrants though it is trying to figure out a way to return them to Libya. The problem for both regimes in Libya is that they don’t want the immigrants launching from their shores. They have enough problems on their hands managing the mess of US-NATO emancipation.

Our fullest solidarity with the refugees. Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Gregorio Borgia/AP)