So much for going all defensive about that anthropomorphism thing! This picture pretty much finishes off the Platonic nonsense about a Great Chain of Being descending from angels to royalty to the rest of us all the way down to rocks.

Of course long before this picture was taken the Great Chain got jammed up when it hit the slugs in Buckingham Palace. Betty Windsor’s clan just did it in.

But back to these beautiful creatures expressing such mother & child love. They make your heart sing.

(From the Facebook wall of Veterinaria)

The Exodus mythology claiming Jews have a Biblical land grant to Palestine is falling apart at the seams. The sound track of Andy Williams crooning “The Exodus Song: This Land is Mine” is drowned out by the sound of Israeli bombers over Gaza.

That worthless lie has been diligently cultivated for over 70 years in film, song, & on TV. Since it’s lost its ability to bring on the tears they’re dragging out the Hamas & jihadi scares & they’re cropping up everywhere: in the TV series Law & Order, The Good Wife (tonight’s episode), Odyssey (a new series), NCIS, The Blacklist. That way, when Israel opens another murderous bombing assault on Gaza, the American people will be pumped for support.

This is the time to build the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel with forums, rallies, flash mobs, speak-outs. Defending Palestinians matters because they show suffering humanity the way forward by their steadfast refusal to bend the knee to apartheid & ethnic cleansing. Their importance is not dependent on their size but because the future of social hatred & tyranny in the Middle East depends on their successful struggle–not just for Palestinians but Jews & the Arabs of other countries.

Cruising Zionist sites on Facebook is quite an education. You learn that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has a plant in Israel; how many of your FB friends “like” Netanyahu; that actor Michael Douglas is born again to Judaism & a feted Zionist; a lot of Zionists are animal lovers but support ethnic cleansing of human beings in Gaza; the annual Zionist parade in NYC will exclude Jewish groups that support BDS & all entrants are required to “identify with Israel as a Jewish & democratic state & recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people”; & that Israel hired a bunch of retired US generals to attest how laudatory Israeli efforts were to minimize civilian casualties during Operation Ethnic Cleansing last summer. They did this through phone calls & leaflets moments before they took out entire neighborhoods with “low impact bombs.”

Mostly what you learn is that Zionism has a deep strain of irrationality & paranoia. Understanding the social psychology of Zionism is no easy matter. One can understand paranoic anxiety in refugees from the holocaust–& even in their children & grandchildren. But how do you account for it in a guy like Douglas born to immense privilege who’s likely never experienced a moment of persecution in his entire life? Or in Christian Zionists who repeat this rubbish?

Some of that craziness is fed by the US Pentagon. Despite 50 days of carpet bombing & overwhelming photographic evidence of massive destruction in Gaza, the US Joint Chief of Staffs attested that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage & prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.” US military officials analyzed UN satellite photos during Operation Ethnic Cleansing & found that 72% of all bombed out areas in Gaza were “within two miles of the Israeli border.” The meaning of that statistic escapes reason however it should be pointed out that Gaza may be 25 miles long (41 kilometers) but it is only 3.7 to 7.5 miles wide (6 to 12 kilometers).

But bar none, the most crazy-assed Zionist claim of all is that Palestinians never existed. They’re a “fake creation ordered & constructed” by the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Palestinian people were “invented” from a “mass immigration from Egypt & Saudi Arabia with the purpose to commit jihad.” You can say this crap is from the lunatic wing of Zionism but it’s indistinguishable from the rantings of Israeli politicians.

This little boy in Gaza is real & the mountains of cement rubble behind him are real. If Zionists have to deny reality to make their case against irrefutable evidence, if the best they can do for defense is falsify history, then those who support Israel against Palestinian justice need to have their heads examined.

(Photo from Global Research)

Palestinian teens in Gaza are doing parkour off the Banksy mural of an Israeli army watch tower in Beit Hanoun, the town where Israeli bombers took out a school used by the UN as a refugee center during Operation Ethnic cleansing last July. Fifteen, mostly women & children, were killed & 200 were injured, including disfiguring & disabling shrapnel damage. It’s only a few miles across the border from Sderot, Israel where residents pulled up easy chairs to get a front row seat to genocide.

There’s an irony here that should not be missed & was almost certainly intended by the teens. Parkour grew out of military obstacle-course training. It’s something of a rejection of formalized gymnastics training, has no formal moves, no equipment, & requires no dedicated space like a gym but uses public space. According to the Frenchman who helped develop it, parkour is a training method for “warriors” to help overcome physical barriers & mental & emotional obstacles.

The most important part of parkour is not the gymnastics but the philosophy which rejects competition & rivalry. The point is not to show off movements or feel superior over others but “to touch the world & interact with it, instead of being sheltered by it.” That philosophy would strongly suggest its roots in working class culture & certainly explains why it is so popular among working class youth in Palestine.

This video by the teens doing parkour around Banksy graffiti throughout Gaza shows the irony is very much intended & very politically astute.
http://www.theguardian.com/…/banksy-parkour-gaza-shadia-man…

This gangly & exhausted little guy is a 13-year-old boy named Nuru Haruna, a child gold miner in Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is one of the African countries under the whip of World Bank & IMF neoliberal tyranny. Even the NY Times, a voice of US capitalism, calls them “the overlords of Africa” because they took up where colonialism left off. Both agencies are instruments of US foreign policy where the plundered countries become suppliers of raw materials & free trade zones & the Pentagon & CIA are used to crush democracy to better serve plunder.

According to the World Bank’s own statistics, massive poverty in African countries has increased over 75% under their economic & political tyranny. That means more than half of Africa’s population live below the World Bank’s outrageous poverty line of US $1.00 a day.

Mining is one of the primary natural resources foreign corporations go after which requires land grabs from farmers, wrenching the economy from agriculture to extractive industries, & forcing millions to migrate either to urban slums or to other countries for work. Some of the bigger mines are run by foreign mining outfits; hundreds are artisanal operations & the World Bank fosters these because the profits are so massive. Mining company agents buy the gold from small-time operators at dirt cheap prices & sell them on the gold exchange for the going rate which today stands at US $1,600 an ounce.

Child labor is widespread in the artisanal mines & this is no accident–no matter how many crocodile tears UN child welfare agencies pour out all over media accounts. Fundamental to World Bank & IMF austerity policies is destruction of labor power & unionization, & reducing adult workers to unemployed & desperate beggars. Child labor has advantages in that process by getting the work done at levels of super-exploitation & violence.

Part of World Bank & IMF policies are privatizing education, health care, housing so that ordinary working people cannot afford to send their kids to school. For heavens sake, they can’t afford to buy food. Family poverty & economics require children be sent out to work to afford food & housing. This is when UN & NGO officials, political officials, & even World Bank officials come on stage to feign distress at the massive numbers of children leaving school to work the mines.

Their narrative is heartbreaking & up to its eyeballs in hypocrisy & deceit: they’ve tried to discourage Burkina Faso kids from abandoning schools for the mines. They’ve tried to make school “a pleasant place with games & sports.” They’ve tried to “sensitize parents to curb the trend” of truancy. They think maybe they should hold national debates on the issue because parents & kids just don’t get the importance of education.

But along with the crocodile tears, they change the laws to facilitate artisanal mining, encourage foreign investors, & impose austerity on social services. What about a little investment in schools, health care, housing!? In one of the hand-wringing orgies, the minister of education claimed they delivered food to schools in a region known for poor harvests to prevent kids from working the mines & dissuade parents from sending them. But they only had cereal for part of the year. Are we supposed to believe this tripe!?

Since the World Bank & IMF are agencies of US neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, it’s politically imperative that US working people understand what’s going on in our names in other countries. Because if we don’t get off our leaden asses to oppose this, chickens have a way of coming home to roost. The most stinking rancid racism is essential to this entire operation & unfortunately when chickens come home to roost, it is focused on the most vulnerable in US society: children in the Black, Latino, Native American, & immigrant communities.

Those who care about children have to stop uttering pieties about kids being the future & start opposing the assaults on education, health care, & housing in the US & start exposing the crimes of the US in Burkina Faso & elsewhere. Because children like Nuru aren’t just the future; they deserve a world suitable for them to live & love in.

(Photo of Nuru Haruna by Matjaz)

In doing research on children gold miners in Burkina Faso I came across this statement by Lawrence Summers, a former chief economist for the World Bank, president of Harvard University, & official in both the Clinton & Obama regimes. He is a Democrat & a lowlife of the first magnitude. When you read the comment you might ask, how are Democrats the “lesser evil”?

“Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the less-developed countries?… I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable & we should face up to that…I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City…The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand.”

True he doesn’t have the happy face & charm of Clinton or Obama; more vile creatures don’t walk the earth. He’s in the same league as Omar Suleiman, Henry Kissinger, Adolph Hitler. But he was one of Clinton & Obama’s key advisers–& by the way has made a killing on the stock market off the backs of children & working people.

(Photo is Summers; use it to practice your horse manure pitch)

The caption to this photo identifies the runner as one of 25,000 entrants from 60 countries in the fifth Jerusalem Marathon, here leaving the Zion Gate (of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound) “after running through the Old City.” This marathon is not an athletic event; it’s a colonial affront & assault on East Jerusalem which has been under illegal Israeli occupation & colonization since 1967.

East Jerusalem is a constant scene of Israeli military violence against Palestinians who resist being driven out or having Al-Aqsa destroyed. Running that damn marathon past the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is closed to Palestinian males under 50 years-old, is what Israel calls “Judaization,” a policy more appropriately called Israeli apartheid. The intent is to take over urban space in East Jerusalem, isolate & drive out Palestinians, & invent ancient Jewish traditions to justify ethnic cleansing. The marathon was probably a clarion call to Zionists around the world, including nutcase Christian Evangelists.

Not to be daunted by the odds against Palestinians since they have never ceased defiance, we continue to build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (barcode beginning 729) & demand “no aid of any kind to Israel.”

(Photo by Jim Hollander/EPA)

The caption to this photo identified this eyesore as pressed plastic waste at a dump site near Minsk, Belarus & described it as “one of the most environmentally friendly in the country.” Oh my! That’s alarming. What does the rest of the country look like?

Neoliberal waste management has become a catastrophic problem. In the privileged, plundering countries municipalities have hit or miss recycling programs only to learn tons of it still end up in the oceans; is sold to China for recycling where it sits & contaminates their environment; is dumped in the plundered countries causing massive health problems for scavengers earning their livelihood from recyclables. What’s wrong with that picture? Other than the racism, short-sighted stupidity, & utter inability to resolve the problem of waste?

Minsk is nearly 1,000 years old & has a rich economic & political history just in the 20th century during the Russian Revolution (it was part of the USSR) & both World Wars. It’s long been the industrial center of Belarus but since the collapse of the Soviet Union & under neoliberal privatization, industry was expanded without updating technologies & equipment or addressing environmental infrastructure.

There are over 250 manufactories in Minsk producing trucks, tractors, & motorcycles; refrigerators & washing machines; TVs & radios; textiles; tobacco & alcohol; construction materials; printing & metal-processing equipment. In just one district of the city they estimated the industrial slag generated at 100 thousand tons a year, including oil-containing & heavy metal waste, used car tires & batteries, mercury & ash wastes. Overall Belarus produces 22 million tons of waste annually. Without environmental technology to handle the industrial efflux it pours into rivers which drain into the Baltic & Black Sea regions.

An environmental official in Belarus claimed that in the Soviet era waste was exported to parts of the USSR (now that’s a solution whose time has not come) but now piles up outside factories & gets “sent piecemeal to conventional dumpsites if they are not too toxic.” The same official claimed in 2000 that a toxic waste processing facility was being built “but it is hard to say when it is going to be completed.” Under neoliberal waste management policies, odds are the plant is still under construction.

(Photo by Sergei Grits/AFP)

This photo hardly needs a word of commentary. These school children in Bone, South Sulawesi, Indonesia are crossing a river on a rope (in flip-flops, no less) to get to school after a suspension bridge collapsed due to rains.

The majority of Bone residents are farmers & fishermen & this would certainly speak to their respect for education & trust in their kid’s athletic skills. Maybe they ought to prune back on that respect a little so the rest of the world viewing this doesn’t go into cardiac arrest.

(Photo by Sijori Images/Barcroft India)

Don’t you just love that wild & crazy thing capitalism’s got going? That creativity that just bursts at the seams & makes this world so diverse & original? Me neither.

(Phone by Lee Jin-Man/AP)