Believe me, I understand the desire of people around the world to bring down US military might. That is also the commitment of millions of Americans who see the carnage of US militarism at home & abroad. But the alternative is not Russian &/or Chinese military power backing down the US. The alternative is massive international opposition to militarism wherever it comes from. Period.

There are those who don’t understand militarism, who think it can play a progressive, even humanitarian role. Like those who call for a US-imposed No Fly Zone in Syria. Apparently they don’t understand the US commitment to the counter-revolution in Syria. Or they haven’t paid attention to the apocalypse that is Mosul. Or to the horrors in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia–just to name the current US wars.

We all want to see the US Pentagon taken down. But not by Russian or Chinese bombers. Only by the forces of social transformation that consider war & occupation an abomination that humanity must & can overcome if we are to survive. Take all those militaries down.

Heba reunites with her mother after 8 months of separation. She had been transferred from Idlib, Syria to Istanbul for treatment of burns all over her body from a Russian airstrike.

Nothing more need be said to condemn the role of Russian bombers in Syria. Except shame on those who defend Russian military intervention & shame on the Hands Off Syria Coalition who promote the bombing of civilians as a freedom struggle.

Every blessing to little Heba for a speedy recovery in the arms of her family.

Stop the Syrian, Russian, US bombing of civilians in Syria. All foreign military forces out now!

Poor little Russia. How can it defend itself against all that Russiagate badmouthing with only arsenals of AK-47s, air defense missile systems, fighter jets, & tanks like this baby?

Thank God for the libertarians & Stalinists who render solidarity. What would the world do without such nincompoops?

(Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

A US Senate committee just approved a bill that would cut off $300 million in annual US aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless it stops paying stipends–which according to Reuters news service can reach US $3,500 a month–to families of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. This might fall into the category of fake news if not outright sarcasm. It’s a political stunt, not a serious proposal.

The PA receives US aid to administer the Oslo Accords as an adjunct to the occupation, for expropriating Palestinians & enforcing the Accords with Palestinian security forces. Those funds will not be cut until that colonial mission is accomplished. You can bet your bottom dollar that PA officials, led by Mahmoud Abbas, are stealing from those funds for personal enrichment. As window dressing, there may be some humanitarian aid for hospitals to treat Palestinians injured by Israeli occupation forces but you’d have to be an idiot to think the PA actually dishes out $3,500 a month to victims of Israeli violence (unless they have a family member within the PA). That’s over three times the average US Social Security check. Who’s kidding who?

It’s wouldn’t be a bad thing at all for Palestinian self-determination if the US severed its payoffs to the PA but it isn’t going to do that. Rest assured. Palestinian liberation will be won by Intifada & massive international solidarity, including BDS, not by compromises, deals, & betrayals.

Reposting this from August 9, 2012 because a bill has just been introduced in the US Congress to stop the Veteran Administration’s medical research on dogs. It’s called the “Preventing Unkind & Painful Procedures & Experiments on Respected Species Act of 2017” or the “PUPPERS Act.”

My opposition to experimenting on live animals started in the 1960s when I saw a dog being experimented on in a lab at the University of Minnesota medical school. The suffering of the dog haunts me till today because I did not rescue it. After they were through torturing it in the name of science, they would leave it kenneled in a dark hallway whimpering in pain & bereavement. To my mind, there are no lower animals like mice, rats, or bats where torturing is allowable. I know the rationalizations offered by scientists & consider them horse manure. We need to use our great big creative minds to find other ways to advance human health not at the expense of torturing other animals.
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Psycho-scientists in a university lab in Tel Aviv are altering this bat’s nose to study changes in the animal’s sonar beam. You can talk till the cows come home about how this kind of experimentation advances science & human knowledge & blah blah blah how it leads to cures for human disease but after all is said & done, it’s crap science based on the torture of small, helpless animals. It won’t cure any diseases or advance aviation but it does increase the disconnect between humans, the natural world, & other living creatures–kind of like psychosis.
(Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)

Assad apologist Rania Khalek just returned from hard-hitting war reporting out of trendy bars in Damascus sucking down beers with off duty Syrian soldiers. So we might better ignore her latest article titled “How Some Western Feminists Betrayed Women in Syria, & Beyond, Ignoring Threat of US-Backed Islamist Rebels.” One can’t tell where the idiocy begins & the dishonesty starts. Or is it just another hangover?

According to alas poor Rania, it is not US-NATO carpet bombing of civilians that is the problem in those countries but Muslims, of course of the extremist kind. As a long-time feminist & antiwar activist I could take this piece & shred it with ridicule. But Khalek isn’t worth it. The only crap she writes now is parody & propaganda. In a few years, no one will remember who she was.

Assad supporters are circulating a video titled “Burqa is not feminist,” a contrived little propaganda farce in one act. It’s one thing to address coercion by regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, or by ISIS. Women’s attire should not be dictated by law. It’s another to address the issue as one of feminist attire–as this stupid video does. There is no such thing as feminist attire. Are bras feminist? Bikinis? Girdles & shapers? Strapless gowns? Long underwear? There is no dress code, no feminist proscription on what women may or may not wear but only an insistence that women be allowed to dress as they choose.

There are those who do the song & dance about veils being mandated by men & religion & thus we must speak for those women who are afraid to speak for themselves. That’s a sophisticated crock of patronizing horse manure. Whether women who wear the burqa object to it or not it is up to them to decide what to do about it. Thousands of women in Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, Kashmir, Myanmar, & elsewhere have or are leading social revolts against war, occupation, ethnic cleansing attired in a burqa. What kind of presumptuous numbskull would have the temerity to chide them for lacking proper & liberated attire for revolutions? Revolution is a come-as-you-are affair. Those who haven’t led one or participated in one should keep their ignorance to themselves. But of course the Assadist video siding with the counter-revolution in Syria exposes the Islamophobia that is fundamental to that ideology.

Ex-Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is proposing a “private military force” in Afghanistan in place of or along with US marines. He means mercenaries which the US is already using in several countries. Mercenaries who can operate without even the minimum oversight US soldiers operate under in those security agreements giving them impunity for war crimes in Iraq & Afghanistan–similar to the military Special Powers Act (AFSPA) India employs in Kashmir.

Blackwater had to rebrand itself as the Frontier Services Group still under Prince because of the war crimes they were involved in. No to mercenaries. No to US marines. No to war.

The US is sending more marines to Afghanistan & beefing up its military involvement in the Philippines to assist Duterte–allegedly to fight ISIS in both countries. See how that ISIS thing works? It’s the all-purpose justification for US-NATO wars.

The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement. That is not a pipe dream since the movement against the Vietnam War involved millions on every continent.

Since I’ve been baited a few times recently as a white savior, I’ve got something to say about that. I don’t blame black or brown-hued people for being wary about the intentions of whites. But when it gets in the way of political solidarity, it becomes an issue–even though most often it comes from someone trying to demean & undercut solidarity. Like Sam Hamad who called me a white savior with a “fetish” for Palestinians because he opposes BDS & the designation of Israel as a colonial & apartheid state.

My generation went through the civil rights movement where the US transitioned from segregation in the north & apartheid in the south. It was an aborted process, politically reversed by using the so-called war on drugs against the Black community, particularly youth. But that tsunamic social struggle changed attitudes toward Blacks, Latinos, & American Indians from contempt to respect, even if it didn’t change the most malignant institutional forms, especially in employment.

Racism is inculcated through segregation which is why segregation is a pivot of institutional policies–why they’re re-segregating public schools & attacking affirmative action & why they’re whipping up panic about the border wall to keep out refugees & immigrants. Segregation is essential because racism has not proven as intransigent psychologically as it is institutionally. Familiarity fosters friendships. It’s the human way. It’s a political problem for the elite if we don’t hate black & brown people as inferior, criminal, rapists (as Trump does), because then we won’t approve of building those walls or fighting those wars or using dark-hued people as underpaid, super-exploited labor. Racism is part of the very structure of capitalism but it hasn’t worked its way into our DNA.

Just a personal anecdote, admittedly not scientific, but an illustration nevertheless: a beloved uncle of mine is close to half American Indian but not raised in that tradition, nor identified with it. He never badmouthed Black people but in the days of segregation he accepted the prevailing social hatred. His kids however grew up in the era of school desegregation & had friendships with Blacks & Latinos. (American Indians remain pervasively segregated even after they were allowed to leave reservations & move to cities.) He now has dozens of grandchildren, great grandchildren, in-laws who are Black. I asked my cousin who had the first Black baby in the family how long it took my uncle to overcome his antipathy. She answered: “The first time he held her.”

That’s all I have to say. For now.