Category Archives: News

Why you can’t comment on my blog

I did not mean to be inhospitable when I closed my blog to comments. My Facebook wall is full of interesting discussion which I have found so educational. But my blog was spammed constantly with commercial ads & mountains of abuse from Zionist supporters of Israel. I’m a tough cookie but that stuff wears thin real fast–especially the low level of abuse they employed to bring me to my knees in defeat. Mostly it took me hours to get rid of. So it was easier to just close down the comment gizmo.

If you have anything you want to tell me, email or find me on Facebook. Unless you’re a right-winger.  Then just go away.

Kashmiri activists use social media to build their struggle against Indian occupation

It’s always so heartening to see the response to posts about Kashmir because there’s long been a news blackout about India’s occupation & like most of us, I knew nothing about it. After being on Facebook, several Kashmiri friends badgered me to post about their freedom struggle. I had every intention but put them off for a long while. They’re a relentless crowd & they drove me nuts with the badgering. I would give them deadlines, fail to meet them, & they would start a new round of badgering. They won’t be faulted for persistence. India should take note.

Finally, I got to it &, as is common in US libraries on foreign conflicts, had a lot of trouble finding good sources of information or at least information not guided by US State Department-think. I am still working to grasp its dynamics & have found my Kashmiri friends, still persistent, an inexhaustible source of information. I have also found Indira Krishnamurti Pradhan a valuable source of understanding about India’s role.

So I’m no authority on Kashmir but am won over to supporting their struggle for freedom from Indian dominance & military occupation & am committed to explaining the politics of their movement which I have come to respect deeply.

I say all this not to defend myself against the rightwing Kashmiri who accused of a ‘white savior complex’ but to tip my hat to my Kashmiri friends for badgering so shamelessly & relentlessly & using social media to build international solidarity for their struggle.

{PS to my rightwing nemesis who supports the occupation: despite my pallid Irish face, I don’t have a white savior complex. What I have is 71 years of adrenalin overload from living under capitalism. If you get to my age & don’t have it, you might be dead. Check your pulse.}

Another young man assassinated in Kashmir by Indian occupying forces: may Syed Mufeed Bashir Rest In Peace

Funeral in Kashmir of Syed Mufeed (from Sameer UI Haq & Abu Dawar FB walls) Feb 7 2016

A distinctive feature of occupation in both Kashmir & Palestine is the ruthless targeting of young people by occupation forces. It’s not an accident, or that hundreds of young people just get in the way of bullets; it’s a strategy to demoralize & terrorize by murdering youth. Grief becomes a prevailing emotion feeding rebellion because you cannot get away with killing the young & expect subservience. There’s a price to pay for barbarism.

This is the mother of Syed Mufeed Bashir who was killed yesterday in Kashmir. His death is reported with the same tiresome scenario dished out by Indian military officials to justify assassinations of youth in what they call “encounters”: They claim he was a “militant” on the run. They received a tip he was in a certain town so they cordoned the entire area & began shooting & lobbing grenades. Even from a military standpoint, it doesn’t make sense. Though from the point of view of occupation, it’s the modus operandi.

They claimed he belonged to an armed resistance group. So what? Had he committed any crimes? Shot at anyone? Done anything to break the law? Or does he just have no political rights of association? How do they explain why so many unarmed young people are murdered by Indian occupation forces? Or thousands disappeared?

Massive protests that went on for hours were held in his hometown & in other towns after they heard news of his assassination. A complete shutdown was observed in his district. Thousands formed a funeral cortege to honor him.

We may not agree that armed resistance is the wisest strategy–especially when you’re outgunned by nearly a million soldiers. We can’t even be certain he was armed, as the Indian military claimed after they murdered him. We only know people have a right to throw off brutal oppressors by any means necessary.

We respect young Syed Mufeed Bashir & express our condolences to his family, friends, & fellow activists. May he Rest In Peace.

End the Indian occupation of Kashmir!

(Photo from wall of Abu Dawar, thanks to Sameer Ul Haq)

Down with feudalism! A political achievement 300 years overdue. Or is it 400 years now?

Some people think me intolerant in my judgements of feudal moochocracy. They’ve misunderstood me then since I mean to ridicule & excoriate the abominations of feudalism in the harshest, cruelest terms, leaving no contempt unexpressed. No puny intolerance for me on that score.

Any system based on inequality, subservience, autocracy, serfdom which takes money from the poor to sustain the indolent & bends the knee to people in tiaras needs to be blasted decisively off this planet & equality among human beings deeply rooted. Inequality is the root of all evil; human solidarity the foundation of peace & justice.

The great achievement of capitalism was overthrowing feudalism in the great revolutions but it hasn’t completed the job in many places. Moochocracy still exists in nearly 30 countries & everywhere it exists is an impediment to democracy.

So look for no mercy from me about a monstrous system that holds some superior & the majority inferior. It’s a stinking political corpse. It’s time for the Age of Aquarius where all are deemed brothers & sisters. Subservience be damned.

Van the Man bends the knee to feudalism; makes ass of self

Van the Man getting knighted second time

Not to belabor my disdain, but then again why not!? This is the unseemly sight of Van Morrison being knighted a second time by a bored Charlie Windsor who would rather be at the horse track.

Behold the ignominy & try to imagine this is the same guy who wrote “Tupelo Honey,” “Into the Mystic,” & “Moondance.” Feudalism is all about groveling & even Van the Man can’t make it look dignified.

(Photographer unidentified; thanks to Maggie Gordon for this regrettable documentation.)

Defense of hijab brings out the rightwing & nationalists

Overnight, I got flagged in two different posts on Facebook denouncing me in rather crazy-assed terms for defending the hijab–something I’ve done consistently, if not also belligerently, since Islamophobia (& specifically the hijab & burqa) began to be used to justify US wars & military actions.

One of the criticisms was that I dared to address cultures I know nothing about. I’m an American; most of us don’t know squat about most cultures. But I was not talking about other cultures since I try not to talk through my hat. I was talking about feminism & its use in war propaganda & those are things I do know something about. There is little culturally specific about manipulations & scare-mongering for war.

I didn’t stick around the vituperations against me for long; I try to preserve adrenalin for the things that matter. But what was observable among the comments was the liberal veneer to peddle intolerance–a style they learned from the rightwing crap they read.

There were criticisms like “Will she support if Chinese girls start binding their feet just because they wish to?” & a comment that I had “blood on my hands” for naming the woman I was criticizing for her attack on women who wear the hijab–though she wrote her banal article for The Nation, with a readership of thousands. Her opening sentence in the article stated her own reactionary politics about the Indian occupation of Kashmir when she said: “… the attitudes towards females covering up for modesty were always conservative but turned quite ugly in 1990 with the breakout of the Pakistan-backed Islamist insurgency in Kashmir against the Indian State.” So now we know which side she’s on in the Indian occupation of Kashmir & why Indian nationalists were so supportive of her & insulting of my critique.

In the two posts I was denounced for speaking from white privilege & called, by men & women: a moron; drug-addled from the 60s; having a psychiatric past; dubbed Mary Scurrilous; called a bitch, “Osama’s ho”, a “puta” (whore or prostitute in Spanish). Sorry, but none of that rang true. I’m something of a prude in my personal style.

Several people involved in these posts wanted to make sure I read their vituperations so they tagged me. Some were my FB friends–but are now regrettably in FB hell after I booted them. Let me be frank: you don’t stay a woman activist if you cry every time somebody calls you a naughty name.

My favorite comment has to be the guy who posted that he informed “Dr. Phyllis Chesler” about my polemics against her. I’ve wanted to kick her ass for nearly 50 years now–beginning with those boring books she wrote about women’s psychology & mostly for the racist crap she writes ad nauseam about Palestinians & Islam–particularly targeting Muslim women & the hijab. If he could provoke her into a debate with me, making chopped liver out of her would be child’s play. She’s so hateful she could be taken out with a feather.

You gotta wonder why my defense of hijab evokes such ugly outbursts. But not really. They want to hoodwink feminists into supporting Islamophobia & when we don’t buy their crap, they go ballistic. No big deal. Just don’t tag me so I have to read it.

(For those who have time to kill & want to read the stupid article, here is the link; don’t blame me if you wind up regretting the waste of time. Just use it for toilet paper: http://nation.com.pk/blogs/24-Dec-2015/it-s-hard-to-accept-hijab-as-a-symbol-of-liberation-in-free-societies-when-millions-are-oppressed

Thousands of unaccompanied child refugees being victimized in Europe & U.S.

Child refugee (Darko Vojinovic:AP) Feb 6 2016

Over a week ago, a local newscast reported, without elaborating, that many undocumented children caught crossing the US-Mexico border here had been sent to homes where they were abused, sexually assaulted, or forced to work as slaves. They did not repeat that report on their website or in either of the other newscasts that day nor in any newscast since. So I phoned & emailed the news director to ask for more info & which government agency had reported that. I have received no response.

In the next couple days, the Guardian-UK & Al Jazeera both reported that according to Europol, Europe’s police agency, in the past two years, more than 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children had disappeared after registering with state authorities when they arrived in Europe. Five-thousand of those children had disappeared in Italy alone & 1,000 in Sweden. Europol officials said they feared many had been kidnapped for criminal purposes, most likely for sex trafficking.

It is entirely possible that some of those children reconnected with family members or that others went on the lam to elude the inhospitable & controlling grip of the EU. But many questions are raised. Exactly what are EU procedures for processing children without caretakers? Do they just fingerprint them, give them papers & send them to the streets in foreign cities where they don’t know the language? What about food & shelter? What about protection? What about child welfare? How exactly did EU officials lose 10,000 children? How exactly did US officials pass children into the hands of exploiters?

This is a catastrophe that highlights the monstrous character of EU & US refugee policies. When it comes to kids, there are no national boundaries or xenophobic policies with a shred of validity. There needs to be a clamor, thorough investigations, & reforming of the policies for handling children that assure their welfare & safety. If a single child has suffered harm from refugee policies–either through neglect or direct collaboration with the traffickers–criminal charges need to be lodged & the perpetrators prosecuted. Neither Europol nor the local TV station can just report this & move on to something else. They have an obligation under international law & every standard of human civilization to find out what happened to those children & to take the necessary actions to make certain children are protected.

This is a refugee child walking alone into Serbia from Macedonia.

(Photo by Darko Vojinovic/AP)

France continues persecution of Roma through evictions, deportations

Demolition of Paris Roma settlement (SEVGI:SIPA:REX:Shutterstock) Feb 5 2016

In a dawn raid on Wednesday, Paris police moved in on a Roma shanty town & smashed up 135 wooden shacks where 400 people lived–mostly families with children. The camp was in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, the district of Montmartre, the Sacré Cœur basilica, & Moulin Rouge cabaret. The settlement, built in June 2015 on an abandoned railway line, was called the “Little Paris Jungle” in contrast to the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais where 6,000 live.

The SNCF, France’s state-owned rail company, is the property landowner. At the end of last year it filed a legal complaint with the Paris High Court which in turn ordered the French Interior Ministry to clear out the shacks, citing concerns about poor hygiene, heating, & fire safety. Those are the reasons they always cite to justify destroying Roma communities. The unspeakable discrimination & persecution of Roma in France, which has gone on for years, entails the entire government & not just the dopes they elect as officials.

Media reports obfuscate the situation of Roma in France. Or maybe they’re too lazy to investigate & instead rely on government press releases & canned news. Roma have lived throughout Europe for over a thousand years. They’re as European as the pasty-faced politicians trying to evict them. Since there’s so much historic social hatred directed at them, many people don’t identify themselves as Roma on census forms. But there are an estimated 400,000 in France alone whose ancestry in Europe goes back centuries.

In the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR, Roma citizens of Romania & Bulgaria began moving to France. It’s estimated (but who really knows?) that 20,000 from both countries now live in France. Since both countries became part of the European Union in 2007, there are no legal impediments to their move because of EU visa-free movement policy. The illegalities are all by the French government evicting them, razing their communities with bulldozers, handing them $300, & deporting them to Romania on chartered planes.

Every year for the past several, France has been bulldozing communities & deporting about 300 Roma a day. Estimates per year are from 10,000 to over 21,000 shipped like cargo back to Romania & Bulgaria. According to some reports, it’s a revolving door where Roma are dumped in those countries but just turn around & move back to France because–though it’s hard to imagine–discrimination against them is even more egregious in those countries than in France & the rest of Europe.

Because France flouts the EU’s visa-free policies, the EU periodically issues tough talk & threatens sanctions, none of which they’ve implemented. But that is of course because the EU is criminally culpable for its treatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees & immigrants from Africa & the Middle East, in violation of international law.

Persecutions like those of the Roma are what lead to pogroms & holocausts–which derive from racism & colonialism. It’s not that EU regimes haven’t learned the lessons of history but that such monstrous predations are built into the very matrix of the capitalist system–especially during neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

Roma are fellow human beings & whether the xenophobes who run Europe like it or not, they have every right to respect & freedom from persecution. And as long as the EU contraption exists, France has every legal obligation to allow Roma to enter & take up residence.

(Photo of bulldozers razing Roma settlement in 18th Arrondissement from SEVGI/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock)

Israeli Border Police come up with fishy story to explain killing three Palestinian teens

Carl Gustav rifle (from Wikipedia) Feb 4 2016

The Israeli Foreign Ministry went ballistic yesterday over a headline in CBS News about the killing of three Palestinian teenagers at the Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem. CBS initially reported the story with the headline “3 Palestinians killed as daily violence grinds on.” After the Israeli government went on a campaign against the headline, igniting a Twitter storm, CBS changed the headline to “Israeli police kill 3 alleged Palestinian attackers” & later in the day to “Palestinians kill Israeli officer, wound another before being killed.” CBS has not offered an explanation for the changes but maybe they were a wee bit skeptical about the narrative coming out of the Israeli government.

Zionist media & social media are making quite a furor over this incident & because there were so many deaths, it requires investigation. The problem is, all of the information comes from Micky Rosenfeld, the foreign press spokesman for the Israeli police & the story stinks to high heaven.

As narrated by Rosenfeld: Three Palestinian teens “attracted the attention” of Israeli Border Police officers as they approached the Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem. How did they attract attention? Some reports say they were “acting suspiciously.” Were they doing cartwheels as they approached? Casting furtive glances? Carrying a Palestinian flag? Chanting against the occupation? Such details matter in a police report when you’ve just shot three teenagers to death.

Border Police officers asked the young men for identification & as one fished for his papers, the others opened fire, wounding two officers–one of whom died later in hospital. Rosenfeld said the Palestinians were carrying concealed Carl Gustav submachine guns, knives, & bombs. Some reports say the explosive devices were later found “near the site” of the incident. Some reports say the submachine guns were “makeshift Carl Gustav firearms.” What is a “makeshift” automatic weapon? A jacked-up Molotov Cocktail?

It was 59 degrees F/15 degrees C yesterday in Jerusalem. How did three young guys manage to conceal submachine guns that look like bazookas, plus knives, & bombs under their clothes? Were they wearing tents in such warm weather? Is that why they looked so suspicious?

When the young men allegedly opened fire, killing the police officer, other Israel Border Police took them out. A spokesperson for the hospital where the two wounded Border Police officers were taken said the one who survived was in moderate condition, “having received stab wounds across her body.” When exactly in the Rosenfeld scenario did that stabbing take place? Did one of the Palestinians pull out a knife & start stabbing while the other two were shooting off automatic weapons? How long did this go on before they were shot to death?

Can we just acknowledge that the story doesn’t make a lick of sense? That the Israeli police are probably lying through their ass to cover up a terrorist assault on Palestinian teens? If they aren’t lying, they’ll have to come up with a far more credible story than this one because not everyone is a Zionist ideologue willing to believe arrant baloney.

It is deeply sad that the young Israeli woman police officer was killed. But she was part of an occupying army, whether she understood that or not. Though she should never have been in East Jerusalem, may she Rest In Peace. The three murdered Palestinians, who are unnamed & who may not be returned to their families for burial, stand accused of a crime against which they cannot defend themselves because it’s the word of the occupying army against three dead teenagers.

Honor & build the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with a barcode beginning 729. May all of the deceased Rest In Peace.

Photo is a Carl Gustav submachine gun. Is it really credible the young teens were hiding this under their clothes along with knives & bombs?

Van Morrison receives second British knighthood: how many does it take to make a dope?

Van Morrison (Yui Mok:PA) Feb 4 2016

Fans of Van Morrison’s music will be appalled to learn he accepted his second knighthood. He was knighted into the feudal system by Betty Windsor last year & now received a second “sir” from Charlie Windsor. How many sirs does it take to make a dope?

They’ve always said about Van the Man that it was always about the music & that he isn’t political, though he grew up in the working class unionist section of Belfast. Everybody’s got politics; even eschewing politics is a form of it which usually signifies conservatism.

It can be all about the music for Van the Man. Who ever objected to his irascible nature when he sang so gloriously? But enough with the sirs! Quite frankly, feudal titles don’t suit a rebel but only a fool.

(Photo of Morrison holding up the foolish award & his daughter Shana by Yui Mok/PA)