Not to be a killjoy, but St. Patrick’s Day is the only day I claim to be Norwegian. My distaste for the festivities goes back long before I was political because it’s such an artificial thing. It’s been a long time since Tipperary for most Americans of Irish descent.

When I was 21-years-old, just out of the convent, & living in St. Paul, Minnesota, which once had a sizable Irish demographic, I was approached to be in the beauty contest for the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in the city. That was in 1966, not 1866. Having been in a pageant for my employer, I was already on to the misogynist & commercial purposes of beauty shows. And I was full of feminist outrage so I declined.

https://www.facebook.com/maryscullyforpresident2016/?fref=ts

What’s next for Sandernistas? There’s only one lesser evil left standing & given her groveling relationship to Israeli apartheid, support for all the wars including taking out Iran with missiles, & political promotion of & personal enrichment off sweatshop economics, it would be unconscionable to vote for her. Wouldn’t it? Or does the Chicken Little strategy still apply?

You can learn a lot from occasionally browsing Zionist FB walls. For one, there is a profound strain of irrationality, almost a leitmotif, that Israel (one of the mightiest military forces in the world) has no allies but stands alone like David against the Goliath of unarmed Palestinian Intifada. The US is a frequent target of criticism–a whopping case of biting the hand that feeds you after all those billions in military & settlement aid. “Communist China” is coming in for its share of vituperations now despite billions being spent in an orchestrated campaign to bail out Israel from the impact of BDS.

But moving beyond the irrational to the news, we learn the disreputable but always smug Kathy Lee Gifford (associated several years ago with sweatshops in Honduras) & singer-songwriter David Pomeranz, both Zionists, just returned from shooting segments in Israel for NBC. They composed & sang a dozen paeans to Israel while there & will be touting Israel’s cuisine & appeal as a tourist destination. Do you detect the hidden hand of propaganda to counter BDS going on here? The good news is that Gifford singing the songs will be sure to make them a wash.

Without those FB walls we might not know that this week in Berlin 100 parliamentarians from 40 countries gathered for the third conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating anti-Semitism–a front operation initiated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who is orchestrating the murderous EU policy toward refugees. Participants include gangs of politicians from the UK & Israel, as well as EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans, Britain’s Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, & former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Not what you would call the vanguard of human rights on planet Earth but some very important political operators meeting to counter the impact of BDS because that was the entire thrust of the conference.

Gove from the UK said: “Israel is dealing with a prejudiced, systematic attack against its existence. The BDS movement, which claims that it is working against apartheid, in retrospect is using methods of apartheid in that it calls for the shunning of Jewish academics, the boycott of Jewish goods, the de-legitimization of Jewish commerce. It is up to us to show solidarity with the Jews & with their right to national sovereignty.”

Steinmeier from Germany “expressed shock at the wave of anti-Semitism which washed over Germany during Operation Protective Edge two years ago.” Does he mean the hundreds of thousands who joined nearly a million people around the world in defense of Palestinians against the murderous seven-week carpet bombing of Gaza?

There were all sorts of veiled threats coming out of that conference in Berlin. Threats letting us know BDS is having a profound impact on Israel & is mobilizing powerful forces that will try to outlaw & destroy it. An important thing to note is that there is an increase of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe coming from rightwing nationalists–the same nationalists lining up with European politicians (including those at the conference) against refugees from the Middle East & Africa.

The final thing we learn on those FB walls is that BDS has a victory worth noting. Ahava cosmetics company (selling Dead Sea products Gifford is shilling) is moving out of the West Bank, folding to BDS pressure even though a Chinese company bought controlling shares to do an end run around BDS.

Photo is Gifford & Pomeranz in Israel shilling Dead Sea products.

Do an end run all this crap & build BDS.

There’s really no comment necessary on this photo of refugees lining up to ford the Suva Reka river on Tuesday. All those “radical jihadists” taking time to help people in wheelchairs instead of leaving them back in the camp to fend for themselves.

All those parents carrying crying babies, anxious for their safety, hoping they don’t get swept off their feet & drowned, hoping their babies survive to overcome the trauma. Hoping they themselves survive.

Let this photo stand as another condemnation of EU policies which are bringing nothing but misery to millions of human beings. Let it stand as a condemnation of the EU.

A mean-assed xenophobe posted a comment about “radical jihadists” on my recent post about refugees at Idomeni, Greece fording a river to get past razor wire fences into Macedonia. Some people just can’t get past their racism without a massive, powerful social movement to scare the begeezus out of them.

This is the ass-kicking she got from a FB person not on my friend’s list:

“Dear Colette,
We are jihadist you are right. We are not humans that do not deserve respect. We help others when in need but you’re right we are jihadist. We feed the hungry when we are hungry ourselves you’re right. We have brothers and sisters that are dying but we would stay back to help them but you’re right. But you? You are angels that could never do wrong in your life because you are we the people of the United States of America. You are respected for your ignorance against all human kind. Knowledge speaks for itself and in this case Colette, I can tell you acquire no knowledge at all.

It’s common to be glib in profiling social behaviors, especially of youth. There’s an entire industry of such analyses. But it’s striking that in the past few years, Parkour has taken Kashmiri youth by storm–as it has also taken youth in Gaza by storm. What’s notable is that many Kashmiri youth, not social theorists, attribute their interest in the sport/discipline to its prominence among Palestinian youth in Gaza.

Such extreme violence & repression as Kashmiris & Palestinians endure must have a wrenching affect on human psychology, making people feel demeaned & powerless even when they are defiant–especially in the absence of international solidarity. Anyone who suffers discrimination or persecution knows exactly what that phenomenon is all about. Under occupation, you have to walk a fine line to maintain some sense of dignity & not get killed when youth are being targeted.

Heaven forgive me for reposting this from a year ago. And please don’t judge me harshly for laughing at my own post. I have an irrepressible habit of going after politicians with a hatchet which given their corruption, I always consider a too blunt instrument.

Let this be my odious to our new lesser evil, Clinton.

Some people don’t like satire & think it cruel. But that’s exactly what’s so endearing about it. At its best, in words & image it skewers power & pretense combining vengeance with hilarity.