Don’t know if Hillary Clinton is seriously sick but I do know there’s some real mean-spirited speculating about it. I have no feelings about her health one way or the other but wishing ill on someone, even a war criminal, isn’t part of working for social change in my world.

If she were prosecuted in a war tribunal that would be justice. But hoping she has some incapacitating illness would be lowlife.

When my mother quoted the Bible verse, “Revenge is mine. I will repay sayeth the Lord,” I always asked her in return “But why should God have all the fun?” In politics, justice isn’t personal revenge or an Old Testament kind of thing of inflicting someone with ulcers, flesh-eating locusts & 40 years of famine. It’s facing one’s victims in a court of law. That’s the way civilized societies do it.

There’s an unsavory & salacious story that keeps circulating on FB about a child marriage in Yemen between a 40-year-old man & an 8-year-old girl.

The media source is completely unreliable & no matter how many times it is shared doesn’t become less so, The intention is likely racist but could also be to justify the massive bombing.

The greater story in Yemen is the massive starvation among children caused by years of US bombing & now the 1 & 1/2 years of bombing by the Saudi-led coalition armed to the teeth by the UK & US. Not to mention the undaunted opposition of the Yemeni people.

Despite sharp criticisms of the UN Human Rights Council, it is still important for human rights activists to demand a hearing & political support from the UN. Khurram Parvez, a noted Kashmiri human rights activist who is presently the chairperson of Asian Federation Against involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) & program coordinator of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) was invited to present at the Council meeting in Geneva but was not allowed to board the plane in Delhi, India.

Link to statement by JKCCS on barring Parvez from leaving India for UN meeting:

https://www.facebook.com/sheikhkhurramparvez/posts/10154817238368352?hc_location=ufi

(Photo is Khurram Parvez)

Yesterday, the UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein opened a three-week session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva where the Council is based. The Council is composed of 47 countries mandated to investigate human rights violations around the world.

In his opening speech, as per his routine, Zeid briefly catalogued countries requiring immediate investigations, including Turkey, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Yemen, & Syria, & denounced them for refusing to cooperate. Whilst the Council met yesterday, India rejected his request for an investigative team to Kashmir.

India’s refusal of a UN fact-finding team in Kashmir should have brought immediate censure from the Council since India is one of the 47 member countries. But if egregious human rights violations prevented membership, most of the Council members would be disbarred, including also the Philippines, Congo, the UK, Bangladesh, France, Ethiopia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, China, Indonesia, Russia. Reid, a prince from Jordan, should himself be disbarred since he is part of the monarchy which rules Jordan, a country accused by many sources of monstrous human rights violations, especially against refugees from Syria, Palestine, & Africa & against sweatshop workers.

Why is the Council allowing Saudi Arabia, which beheads & crucifies dissidents, not just to sit on the Council but to head up a panel which selects the top officials who formulate international human rights standards for the UN? When Saudi Arabia was chosen it had reportedly beheaded more people that year (2015) than ISIS. Saudi Arabia has also obstructed an investigation team for war crimes in Yemen, which it has been bombing for over 1 & 1/2 years with armaments from the UK which also sits on the Council. Why did Zeid, under pressure from the Saudis, remove the Saudi-led bombing coalition from the Council “List of Shame” for killing & maiming children & targeting schools & hospitals in the bombing.

According to media reports, Zeid emphasized Syria’s refusal to allow an investigative team because it “is believed to have gassed its own people; has attacked hospitals & bombed civilian neighborhoods with indiscriminate explosive weapons; & maintains tens of thousands of detainees in inhuman conditions.” Is a UN team required to document these crimes since photographic evidence is all over media? Can’t the UN seek necessary documentation about who is bombing from US & Russian surveillance systems–& if they refuse, include them in the indictment? Syria should be strongly censured so antiwar activists can stop supporting Assad as a beleaguered champion of democracy. But so should India, the UK, US, & Saudi Arabia be censured in no uncertain terms. Those who seriously concern themselves with human rights & war crimes don’t play politics with the perpetrators.

No one should be too disappointed that India has refused the UN investigative body access to Kashmir. In July 2014, when Israel was bombing Gaza to smithereens & directly targeting hospitals, schools, refugee centers, residential areas, the Council said there was “a strong possibility” of Israeli war crimes. In a report issued in June 2016, the Council said Rohingya “may be” victims of “crimes against humanity” by the Myanmar regime under Aung San Suu Kyi because they are subjected to forced labor, sexual & other violence, persecution. The public documentation of pellet munitions is all over media, including Indian media. That alone should evoke the strongest condemnations from the UN Council. Such condemnations will not be forthcoming.

UN Human Rights Council reports on Iraq & Afghanistan never mention US military intervention but only cite ISIS & Iraqi & Afghan government troops for war crimes. It’s beyond dispute they are engaged in war crimes but what about US bombers, ground troops, mercenaries, CIA agents & their torture prisons?

Any farmer can tell you that you can’t put a fox in charge of the chicken coop. You cannot put the worst human rights violators on the planet in charge of monitoring human rights & expect them to come up with anything different than the crap the UN Human Rights Council dishes out for public consumption & deception.

Photo published by Reuters is Kashmiri protester jumping a fire. What does the UN human rights agency think is going on here? A parkour competition?

(Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

The socks of British politician Nigel Farage from today’s Guardian-UK photojournalism album:

Does media get more cutting edge than that!? So well Guardian editors must understand that a photo is worth a thousand lies.

What about Syria, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Gaza & the West Bank, Somalia, Congo, North Dakota? What about refugees?

(Photo by Vincent Kessler/Reuters)

Was supposed to go to the dentist in Mexico today with a friend but Sophie-Amalia, the Schnauzer dog who continues to outsmart me, got past my barricades again & chasing her meant I was too late for the appointment.

This is the 8th time just this week I’ve had to drive the neighborhood looking for her even though I’ve repeatedly gone over every inch of the fence to fortify & refortify it. The worst part is that she takes my little tripod dog with her & sometimes the other little ones. My little tripod lost his leg from following her in one of her escapes.

Two days ago, I found them a few blocks away in a gated yard I couldn’t enter. They were chasing chickens while the family dog defended the chickens. It was an ordeal to retrieve her.
Since I’ve had her she’s killed two of my birds, caused one dog to lose his leg, & taken ten years off my life. Rescue operations are overfilled & can’t take her & I’m unwilling to dump her in the pound. I have to relinquish her fast but have no idea where though I’m begging rescuers to find a place for her on the adoption caravan to Denver.

She’s a wonderful dog without a mean bone in her body except when I keep her indoors for safety. Then she harasses & barks continuously at the little dogs.

Color me frantic. I’m outsmarted by a Schnauzer.

Reposting this from September 14, 2015 because the history is so important & because its conclusion is borne out not just in North Dakota today but by the struggles of indigenous peoples on every continent against the continuing attempts to exterminate them:
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The late 19th century & early 20th century was the era when anthropology–a fundamentally racist “science”–was developed because it was the era when it was thought indigenous peoples had decisively been vanquished throughout the Americas. The ruling elites developed natural history museums to record the extinctions of millions of people & exonerate the barbarism involved in wars of extinction by glorifying “Indians” as the “noble savage.”

White supremacy & colonialism have peculiar social & psychological ways of dealing with the enormity of the violence perpetrated. In his book “Playing Indian,” Phillip Deloria describes the role playing involved from the Boston Tea Party where participants dressed as Indians, to Boy Scout & other group rituals, to cowboy & Indian movies, to sports teams with Indian insignia. ‘Playing Indian’ permeates society till today because the issue of genocide is historically denied & has never been dealt with politically or socially because it continues. And it continues not just in the US but from Alaska to the southern tip of Latin America with multinational enterprises expropriating indigenous lands for agribusiness, mining, oil drilling.

After the wars of extermination in the post-Civil War era–led by former Union generals commissioned by President Abraham Lincoln–Native Americans who survived were driven on to reservations where they lived defeated in squalor & poverty. It was at this time the ruling elite, including J.P. Morgan, commissioned photographers to record the Indian way of life for anthropological purposes. They believed Indians were going extinct & wanted to document them. They certainly weren’t paying photographers to record the realities of reservation life.

The photos which are stunning portraits are more often staged & inauthentic to the attire & certainly to the lives of the subjects. They are glorified, romanticized images of the “noble savage” & fundamentally white supremacist in intent.

An adjacent point about anthropology museums is their distinction from museums of fine art. The latter are considered the venue of the highest achievements of human artistic creativity; natural history museums are considered the repository for primitive ‘artifacts.’ You don’t get more repugnant & supremacist than that.

It was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that changed the study of US history due to the development of Black & Native American studies. Along with ‘playing Indian’ rituals, historic deceits are the nature of colonialism. To today, school text books do not include the study of genocide against Native Americans nor the study of slavery from a non-supremacist point of view. But the Americas will not heal from this continuing catastrophe until it corrects the historic record.

That’s why the present role of Native Americans against environmental plunder from the North to the South Poles is so important. They have re-entered history rather than pass serenely to extinction.

(Photo by Lee Moorhouse)

A Filipino official representing president Rodrigo Duterte announced on government radio yesterday that Duterte’s campaign of summary executions against illegal drug use has been a resounding success. According to his lying ass report, shooting down poor people on the street suspected as drug addicts or drug peddlers had cut the drug supply to the country by nearly 90-percent in just two months.

Figures released last Friday by the Philippine National Police claimed that the reduction in drug trafficking was accomplished by shooting down 1,466 people in police operations & another 1,490 by vigilante death squads unleashed by Duterte.

That’s a total of 2,956 people (there are likely many more unaccounted for) suspected of drug use & selling who never got to defend themselves in a court of law. Even if they were guilty as sin, every one of them had a right to due process. Everyone of one of them needed health care, rehab, housing, jobs–a life worth living.

Duterte represents the greatest danger to the Filipino people. The brutal repression he is introducing to applause in the long run is not going to be confined to small-time drug use but is intended to stop the growing political opposition to scorched earth neoliberal policies in the rural areas & cities & to the growing re-militarization of the country in collaboration with the US.

These young people are grieving a family member who was an alleged drug dealer executed on the street by police. If you support Duterte’s death squad policies for drug trafficking, explain to the rest of us how a small time drug peddler could possibly affect the traffic of drugs into the Philippines. To do that, Duterte would have to send those death squads against bankers, government officials, high-class business men he meets at the country club.

The historic imperative remains: to rebuild the international antiwar movement to end the reign of terror imposed by US militarism, of which Duterte is a part.

(Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA)

A stunning work of solidarity with Kashmir titled “The Puzzle” by Rollie Mukherjee. Such is the creativity & the power of rebellion against outrageous injustice.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

In Western media, this photo could be called a first. For years there has been no coverage at all of Kashmir, including in photojournalism. After Kashmiri activists on social media made bare minimum mainstream media coverage necessary, mostly what was published was Kashmiri women’s prayer rituals & during this military siege infrequent photos of lone male protesters. If you wanted any real coverage you had to go to social media–FB & Twitter where at least for now, there’s less censorship than on FB.

Here this guy, who the caption calls an Indian policeman but is clearly attired in army fatigues, is shooting tear gas shells at unarmed protesters in Srinagar today.

The picture is of little other interest except as one of the rare moments when a fragment of truth got past media censors about what is really going on in Kashmir & for that matter in Palestine, both under military occupation.

(Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)