Homeless in Gaza City: this little girl is looking through the sheet that now serves as a door in her families bombed-out home. Delegates from 50 countries & 20 NGOs attended a donor conference in Cairo on Sunday to raise contributions to rebuild Gaza, which would include thousands of destroyed homes. Just removing the mountains of cement rubble will require millions in heavy equipment like bull dozers & back hoes.

Billions were pledged at the donor conference but no one should hold out high hopes all (or even most) of the money will actually be dispersed. Although it’s reported, no media has thought to investigate why billions are pledged for catastrophe & war zones like Haiti & Afghanistan & either it never gets dispersed or it’s used for other purposes like bribery & outright theft.

The media caption to this photo said the destruction is from “the war between Israel & Gaza’s militant Islamic group Hamas.” They’ll need a few extra back hoes just to take out the mountain of lies. This wasn’t a war; it was a genocide. And Hamas may be militant but they’re not psychopathic like the Israeli leadership.

This is where the massive international solidarity movement comes in. We need to evangelize the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS). If you want to make politicians in any country listen you have to squeeze their little pea brains until it hurts. BDS is already having a powerful affect on the Israeli economy & it’s international reputation. If Palestinians are to stand a chance of justice, intifada has to go international & exert massive economic & political pressure on Israel. That’s what solidarity is all about.

(Photo by Adel Hana/AP)

Last May, when Pope Francis stopped his entourage to pray briefly at the apartheid wall separating the West Bank from Israel, many heralded that as a symbolic, even unprecedented, gesture. He made another symbolic unprecedented gesture a couple days later when he stopped to pay tribute at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. The question arises: which symbolic unprecedented gesture carries more weight? Or it might be better to ask: which one is more useless? Judging from his silence during Israel’s Operation Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza, it could be argued the pope threw a couple good prayers away at that wall because symbolic doesn’t cut it when there’s a genocide involved. Neither does silence.

This symbolic gesture thing is getting carried way too far. Now we’re supposed to get all excited that Sweden & the British parliament have “recognized the state of Palestine”. Which state is that? Or more aptly, which bantustate is that? Gaza? Which Israel just spent seven weeks bombing to smithereens; which Israel holds in the grip of a murderous blockade; where Israel just maneuvered a leadership change as a condition to stop it’s genocidal rampage? Or is it the West Bank, while Israel continues expropriating Palestinian lands & moving in thousands of Zionist settlers from all over kingdom come to take over those expropriated lands?

Are Palestinians expected to be satisfied, even jubilant, over that kind of recognition & just symbolic kinds of victories? What about justice? What about self-determination? These phony-assed recognitions are a political scam. Sweden & Britain didn’t utter a peep of objection against Operation Ethnic Cleansing; in 66 years, neither has rendered even a modicum of meaningful support to Palestinians. What about the several million Palestinians still living in refugee camps? What about the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails for resisting land expropriations? What about standing up against Israel for war crimes in Gaza & for reconstruction of Gaza? What about using the immense resources of Sweden & Britain to stay the hand of Israeli genocide & mobilize international support for Palestinians? What about doing something real & not just symbolic?

The two-state solution is dead as a door nail & has been for a very long time. It is definitively buried in mountains of cement rubble that now cover the landscape of Gaza. In order to survive, Palestinians have to compromise & make temporary concessions in negotiations with Israel. But solidarity activists around the world do not have a gun to their heads. Every time one of these nations throw up another symbolic gesture–even of the unprecedented kind–we should stand steadfast for Palestinian justice–which is not a bombed out bantustate or an outpost in the West Bank. It is not the 1967 borders either. It is all of Palestine & a democratic secular state where Jews & Palestinians can live in peace. Some call that a pipe dream. It is more aptly called justice. And it is possible.

This photo is Gaza City which Sweden & Britain so proudly recognized as a Palestinian state. The pipe dream is thinking a bantustate could ever be a worthy alternative to justice.

(Photo by Adel Hana/AP)

From the annals of the US Civil Rights Movement: a 1963 protest by Black Muslims against police brutality. The viral spread of Islamophobia in the US within the context of the war on Black youth raises questions about the history & political role of the Black Muslim movement here. Not all of that history is inspiring. Louis Farrakhan, the leading Black Muslim today, represents the right-wing trend within that movement. Malcolm X, who was murdered by government agents in 1965, represents the best of that tradition. His powerful speeches lacerating the racist power structure in this country remain the most incisive & uncompromising political critique of systemic racism. He spoke for Black working people & would not bend an inch in his mission. Nor did he ever fawn before power. That’s why they murdered him.

A new civil rights movement is forging in Ferguson, Missouri, where police gunned down another unarmed Black teen after Michael Brown. Protests have not ceased nor fearless challenges by activists to the racist power structure. It’s certain many of those activists are inspired by Malcolm X’s words which still resonate powerfully nearly 50 years after his murder & will continue to resonate until racism is destroyed–however long that takes & by whatever means are necessary.

It’s certain his words are educating the new generation of Black freedom fighters who will take the fearless, uncompromising political path he forged & reject the sniveling mis-leadership of people like Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson shilling for the racist power structure. Like Che Guevara, Malcolm X will always be on the front lines of the struggle against racist violence & tyranny.

So while Islamophobes vituperate & denounce Islam as a religion of hate, Muslims can point to Malcolm X who was a fearless apostle of justice. Anger & hatred against injustice can never be maligned; they are the very soul of social transformation.

(Photo by Gordon Parks)

Most Christians are hard-pressed to explain much of their own theology let alone that of other Christian sects & denominations. There are hundreds (thousands?) of sects that parse the Bible into infinity & then there are the Catholics who never even read the book. Some groups have supplementary theological texts (like the Mormons); some wear uniforms (like the Salvation Army); some spend all the Sabbath in church & some hot foot it out after a half hour mass. Some of those sects are just plain wacky. The exact same thing is true of Judaism. Or what’s a Talmudic scholar for?

So when media goes hog wild with the accusations about Islam, you have to know they’re talking through their asses. They don’t have a clue if the Qu’ran is even published in English. Or is it in Arabic? Or Swahili? Or Polish? Are there different versions of it as there are of the Bible? They don’t know the difference between a Sunni & a Shia. They still can’t believe there are white Muslims or African ones; they thought it was just an Arab thing. And what the hell are Black Muslims in the US all about? They don’t know so they just make things up. Because the campaign is not about Islamic theology; it’s about vilifying a religion & fostering social hatred to justify military occupations, drone bombings, neoliberal colonialism & barbarism. And political repression.

It’s one thing to deal with the low-level crap of Islamophobia. We’ve heard it all before a thousand times because racism, prejudice, & stereotype all have a certain monotonous & moronic pattern. Every time they (& we should not have to identify who “they” are) want us to hate on another group, the chorus of media & academia start droning scary tales chalk full of boogie men. A lot of people still can’t see through that stuff. It usually can’t be reasoned with but there’s no need to get on a high horse about it because the learning curve to overcome social hatred is a tough one to navigate. And what isn’t responsive to reason folds like a paper tiger before the power of a massive social movement. The US Civil Rights Movement is only one case in point.

The good news is there is no high-level to this stuff. Even when it’s published in places like the NY Times or Washington Post or debated at Harvard or Oxford, it’s the cacophony of fools. Ignorant, stupid fools. The Washington Post published an article on October 6th titled “Ben Affleck & Bill Maher are both wrong about Islamic fundamentalism” which discusses a 2013 Pew Research Center poll of 38,000 Muslims about Sharia law, honor killings, stoning of adulterers, “death for apostates”, the role of women in society. The poll concludes, contrary to the title, that Bill Maher is in fact absolutely correct & Muslims are a dangerous homicidal lot. All 1.6 billion of them. If reports coming out of Israel about the massive support for Operation Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza are at all accurate, that means Muslims have a lot in common with Zionists.

You can parse that damn Pew poll as scrupulously as some evangelicals do the Bible but what’s the point!? It’s horse manure masking itself as social science. They have a section describing a methodology so paltry it would get flunked in a middle school social studies class. No distinctions are made between social classes, Muslim denominations, rural/urban differences, whether or not the country is currently under occupation or bombing, if there have been persecutions or pogroms against them, or if they live in a country like Egypt which had a revolution pulled out from underneath them by the Egyptian military & US Pentagon. We’re supposed to believe Islamic theology not politics produces terrorists because by nature it is hateful & bellicose when in fact it’s the producers of this crap who are hateful & bellicose–& stupid. Supremely stupid.

Read the damn thing if you like; do it on an empty stomach so there are no regrettable mishaps as a result. And be aware the Washington Post article represents Muslims much more unfavorably & succinctly than the report itself–even though it’s hard to be succinct about what 1.6 billion people think & feel.

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/06/ben-affleck-and-bill-maher-are-both-wrong-about-islamic-fundamentalism/

But then watch this video of Mehdi Hasan, a British Muslim & political journalist taking out some academic Islamophobes at Oxford University student union. When he’s finished with them, they’re drooling spittle into their crotches & their disgrace alone is worth the viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahPQSsvqbyY

(Photo is still shot from video of Mehdi Hasan at Oxford debate)

What’s to say about Malala Yousafzai & Kailash Satyarthi jointly winning the Nobel Peace Prize for their “struggle against the suppression of children & young people”? Their reputations may never recover from receiving this odious honorific. It’s hard to tell what either one has actually done for kids but one hopes it’s a lot more than Henry Kissinger (who won the damn thing in 1973) has done for peace or Obama (who got it in 2009) who is orchestrating seven wars.

Since it’s inauguration as a prestigious award the thing has been tainted & full of baloney but when Kissinger got it whilst the US was raining bombs on Vietnam it became the moral equivalent of used toilet paper. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee owes this year’s two winners an apology. We send our condolences. From now on they won’t be welcome in the better venues.

We cannot let the 47th anniversary of the murder of Ernesto “Che” Guevara pass without tribute to the contributions he made to human freedom. His murder in Bolivia on October 9, 1967 by CIA agents is documented & not a matter of speculation.

Whether to cash in on his glory or neutralize him as a pop cultural icon, his image gave rise to a fashion called “Che chic” & his image has for years appeared on tee shirts & other garments. This has created controversy among less than great thinkers who want him denounced in the most scurrilous way or by those who think a tee shirt image unworthy of his contributions. To the former, we say “Eat your heart out!” & to the latter we say, “Lighten up!”

One of the most inspiring things about his tee shirt image is that it appears on the front lines of struggles across this globe over & over again–because whatever political misjudgments he might have had (& guerrilla warfare would be the first of them), he stood for & he championed the very best in human beings & he acted on his convictions. He believed in social transformation & in the ability of human beings to achieve it. And for that, he will always be honored.

Here his image shows up on a banner at a march in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico on October 8th. The Zapatista movement mobilized tens of thousands of Mayan farmers, teachers, students, & others to stand in solidarity & demand justice for the six murdered & 43 missing students in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. The banners read “Your Pain is Ours”, “Your Dignified Outrage is also Ours”, & “You are not alone”. That is the heritage of Che Guevara & that is why his image will always be on the front lines of struggles against tyranny.

(Photo from Schools for Chiapas / Escuelas para Chiapas)

An unspeakable crime has been committed in the city of Iguala, Mexico in the state of Guerrero. On September 26th, municipal cops & members of a criminal gang (the distinction is false) ambushed & opened fire on buses of students from a local teachers college returning from a class trip to solicit donations for school supplies. It is likely not an irony that the students were also raising funds to finance a trip to Mexico City to participate in the annual protest commemorating the Tlatelolco massacre of October 2, 1968 when Mexican troops gunned down 300 protesting students in Mexico City.

It was a gruesome attack in Iguala & after the initial gunfire, dozens of students reportedly fled. Those who didn’t flee & waited for authorities to arrive were fired on three hours later by another vigilante group. A nearby busload of soccer players was also fired on, apparently mistaken for the same group of students. Six students were murdered (one of them was 15-years-old) & 43 remain missing from a massacre Guerrero authorities claim has no known motive. The mayor of Iguala, previously accused of links to criminal vigilantes, claimed on radio he knew nothing about the attacks because he & his wife were dancing. It’s uncertain why the Los Angeles Times reported on October 8th that the 43 students vanished “after clashing with police.” How does an ambush constitute a clash?

Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto dispatched federal troops to take over Iguala & arrested 22 municipal cops. (They ought to dance that mayor off to jail with them.) One media report suggests the vigilantes are linked to leftist guerrilla movements. Some tried to impute the students in drug trafficking. Nothing like grasping at straws for explanation. There is other media speculation the vigilantes were drug traffickers but the distinction between drug traffickers, Mexican cops, the Mexican government, US Banks, & the US Pentagon is becoming difficult to make. Even the governor of Guerrero acknowledged that the majority of cops in the state were coopted or infiltrated by organized crime. Why he excluded Pena Nieto from that indictment is less a matter of speculation than self-preservation.

Since the massacre, 28 bodies have been recovered from several mass graves. The perpetrators had doused the graves & set them on fire so it is uncertain if the remains are among the 43 missing. No quick assumptions can be made without forensic investigation & DNA evidence since mass murder & burial of undocumented immigrants from Central America by vigilantes is so common in Mexico.

The anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre might have been the worst political timing for another student massacre. Thousands of people, including teachers in the capital of Guerrero, protested in cities all over Mexico with banners proclaiming “Indignation takes the streets” & with images (as in this photo) of the 43 missing students.

Our fullest solidarity with the protestors in their demand for justice for the students murdered & missing.

(Photo by Omar Torres/AFP/Getty Images)

We should take a moment to honor the doctors & nurses treating the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, & Guinea. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) has 2,000, including 200 volunteers; last week Cuba dispatched 165 medical staff to Sierra Leone & will be sending 296 more to Guinea & Liberia when they finish training in how to deal with Ebola.

A medical degree in almost any country affords a comfortable life & for men & women to put that aside for dangerous humanitarian missions merits only the highest respect. With the exception of a photojournalist & Thomas Duncan, the man who contracted Ebola & died in a Dallas hospital, those affected thus far are medical personnel. We witnessed the same extraordinary humanity among doctors & nurses in Gaza during Israel’s barbarous Operation Ethnic Cleansing.

In ignominious contrast, Israel at first refused to send medical personnel to West Africa for fear of contamination. After realizing this only added to their growing image problem, they reneged & will be sending a few mobile units. The US feels no shame in sending 4,000 men with guns in place of doctors & nurses.

Rebukes aside to the hundreds of countries who haven’t lifted a finger to address the epidemic, we honor those men & women who express the most decent & glorious qualities of humankind by risking their own lives to serve.

This is a Doctors Without Borders health worker in Paynesville, Liberia. The little girl & her mother showed symptoms of Ebola & are waiting test results.

(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Media (& not just in the US) has hijacked the story of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates could affect 1.5 million by early next year. The story has now become about the threat of Ebola to the US & European countries & alarmist speculations about purposely infected ISIS operatives on suicide missions & terrorists using bags of Ebola vomit for bioterrorism. This tops in burlesque all the anti-communist scares of the McCarthy era combined & would be comical were it not for the 1.5 million people in West Africa threatened with devastating disease.

Partly the intention is switch & bait so we don’t notice nothing is being done to medically address the disaster. But it can only be pulled off convincingly with the grotesque mind-set of white supremacy & includes suggestions that Liberians are foiling attempts to provide treatment due to ignorance.

During the Ethiopian famine of 1974, deranged Harvard academics applied the medical model of triage & claimed it more merciful to leave famine victims die. We don’t know if the genocide model of triage is being applied to West Africa; we only know nothing is being done to address the catastrophe. Coming out of the “zero population” crowd, there have always been warped people who promoted this crap–of course only for countries with brown & black populations. It would be unthinkable to suggest this for nations considered primarily white because the outrage would be thunderous.

There are also the religious nutcases & talk radio hosts who claim famine & epidemic are divine punishment for violating their catalog of sins. And there are the sociopaths who claim famine & epidemic are nature’s way of trimming population. Add to this cacophany the libertarians like Mike Adams of Natural News who claim the Ebola epidemic is a conspiracy, that Ebola was invented in a laboratory.

You don’t need to devise conspiracy where there is no evidence. You don’t need to see divine retribution or any other crazy-assed misanthropic explanation when neoliberal healthcare (i.e., the almost complete absence of healthcare) alone indicts. Liberia, the epicenter of the epidemic in West Africa, not only does not have Ebola treatment centers; it doesn’t have primary health care facilities because the president & Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is investing millions in a military arsenal.

When Obama deployed 4,000 troops of the 101st airborne division to Liberia it was under the guise of humanitarian aid. It was claimed they were going to supervise the construction of 17 treatment centers of 100 beds each & to train medics. But the 101st airborne division is a combat unit that may include medics but is distinct from the medical corps. If the CDC projects 1.5 million Ebola victims in the next four months what the hell will 1,700 beds do to address the disaster? Why do they need a division of elite combat-trained soldiers to stand around watching construction? Why aren’t they deploying hundreds of doctors & nurses instead of a few medics? There’s little evidence the 101st airborne division is or ever has been deployed for humanitarian purposes. The only people who believe the Pentagon sends soldiers for humanitarian purposes are those who’ve watched too many WWII movies.

There are confusing reports about the development of an Ebola vaccine to prevent the spread of the disease. Many reports conflate a vaccine for prevention with a serum to treat those already afflicted. The few who contracted Ebola & were treated in US hospitals were given experimental serums not yet cleared by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for mass production.

There are apparently universities under contract with the CDC engaged in research for a vaccine & for a serum. There are, more significantly, three Canadian companies contracted to develop a vaccine by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a division of the US Department of Defense. The function of the DTRA is to counter weapons of mass destruction (including biological weapons) & provide combat support. Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, a Vancouver company, was contracted for $140 million by the DTRA to develop an Ebola vaccine. In March 2014, Tekmira was granted a Fast Track designation from the FDA but in July, as the epidemic developed in West Africa, the FDA placed a full hold on clinical trials. That full hold was modified to a partial hold in August. Information is too sketchy to make accusations but it certainly appears fishy, maybe even criminal, for the FDA to fart around on the development of a vaccine when over a million human lives are at stake.

What the hell kind of world is this where millions of human beings are denied basic medical care? Where epidemics are militarized? Where millions of lives are jeopardized? Where people with the good sense to distrust corrupt governments are portrayed as ignorant & causing their own demise? This is the world of neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, where human life is deemed expendable in the pursuit of monumental wealth for the few.

This little girl is 9-year-old Mercy Kennedy in Monrovia, Liberia grieving her mother who died after being taken away in an ambulance to an Ebola ward the previous day. Mercy walked around in a daze in her nightgown & flip-flops & was found by neighbors following the sound of her wailing. This small child’s grief is only a fraction of the cost of indifference, racism, & neoliberal colonialism.

What can we do to resist this? We can demand Obama withdraw the troops from West Africa & deploy medical personnel.

(Photo by Jerome Delay/AP)

There are so many questions posed but not answered about the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Sierra Leone, & Liberia, three of the poorest countries in the world. Where thorough investigation is required, we get piecemeal reports that don’t add up to a coherent narrative. This is when you see US media expose its real character because while health organizations project the spread of Ebola in West Africa to potentially 1.5 million people by early next year, US media is focused on a couple US citizens who contracted the disease & is scare-mongering about ISIS suicide agents coming across the US border to terrorize with biochemical warfare. This is where white supremacy dovetails with propaganda & a grand switch & bait to distract from the travesties & abominations of neoliberal healthcare in Africa–& possibly the application of the racist triage theory where elite academics & politicians consider it more merciful to let people without a function under neoliberal plunder simply die miserably.

The ecology of Ebola is not well known, or at least is not consistently elaborated. But the first reported breakouts were in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1976. There have been 34 episodes since then in several central & western African countries with an estimated death toll of over 4,000 deaths (certainly a lowball estimate). The reported death toll in Western Africa during this episode is nearly that figure now. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) calls this epidemic “the largest in history”; the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the current epidemic “a public health emergency of international concern.”

We haven’t heard from any public health agencies in the affected countries because even primary healthcare is in a shabby state under neoliberal regimes. Liberia has two treatment centers for Ebola victims, one with only eighteen beds. Mostly people have been dumped in squalid quarters without beds & no medical personnel. Or they’ve been left to die in their homes & in the streets. The Nobel Peace Prize winning president of Liberia is too busy building up a military arsenal to provide for public health. In nearly 40 years of Ebola episodes, no public health agencies comparable to the CDC have been established in the affected countries so that pronouncements about Ebola come from Geneva (WHO) & the US (CDC).

Many articles describe the reluctance of Liberians to go for treatment as though it were ignorance & superstition. Photojournalists show government teams going out to communities to educate & bully. (Would that people in the US were as “superstitious” about their own regime!) If you know victims are simply dumped in empty buildings without medical treatment, are sprayed down with some kind of decontaminant like they were livestock, are left to die in the streets, & corralled into guarantine, that “superstition” is the height of wisdom & self-preservation.

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), who have been treating Ebola epidemics in Africa for 20 years, issued two reports (July & August 2014) excoriating in the frankest diplomacy the criminal failures of what they term the “humanitarian system” to address this epidemic. Their report titled “Where Is Everyone?” takes everybody in that system out, including the UN, WHO, the so-called “international community”, & NGOs. They said without batting an eyelash in apology: “the UN is “at the heart of the dysfunction.” NGOs are no-show & government humanitarian aid has been promised but not delivered.

Their damnation is worth quoting in whole. In the past 20 years, they say “operational capacities in the United Nations system have been gradually reduced through reforms. For example, the restructuring of the World Health Organization in Geneva has led to the closure of its viral hemorrhagic fever unit. Member states should be held accountable for an unceasing reduction of response capacity. A destructive spiral has materialised, leading to what we see today: lack of leadership, deficient coordination and, last but not least, a striking absence of operational capacity. This is compounded by the fact that the international community simply doesn’t feel responsible for responding to what is happening in regions that are not perceived as politically or economically interesting.” In other words, no one is doing a damn thing to address the suffering & save the lives of millions of people in central & west African countries. That’s where the media switch & bait comes in: to disguise this treachery behind alarmism about Dallas being taken out by Thomas Duncan & ISIS coming over the border with bags of Ebola vomit.

This little girl is 9-year-old Nowa Paye being taken to an ambulance after showing symptoms of Ebola infection in a village 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia (Sept 30th). Can you imagine what it’s like for a small child to be carted off by some stranger in a space suit with no certainty for her family she will ever return or that she will receive medical treatment!?

(Photo by Jerome Delay/AP)