The death of baby Ali Dawabsheh, who burned to death when Israeli settlers torched his family home, testifies to the criminality & barbarism of Israel’s settlement projects in the West Bank. Regrettably, he is not the only Palestinian being grieved right now. The situation in the West Bank of Israeli soldiers fatally shooting unarmed Palestinian youth resembles nothing so much as police homicides in the Black community in US cities.

Last week alone, there were funerals for three young Palestinians shot by Israeli soldiers. Here they are mourning the death of 19-year-old Mohammed Lafi Abu Latifeh who lived in the Qalandia refugee camp & was shot to death on an arrest raid. Israeli reports about what happened contradict those of Palestinian witnesses. Israeli authorities claimed he was a terrorist suspect–& in the racist thinking of an apartheid regime, summary execution is legitimate.

This is Israeli Yishai Shlissel attacking gay pride marchers with a knife last Thursday in Jerusalem; six were stabbed, two of them seriously injured. Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, are falling all over themselves disassociating from his actions. Netanyahu said the attack “contradicted the country’s basic values.” In fact what it contradicts is Israel’s elaborate pinkwashing of apartheid.

Much is being made of Shlissel’s ultra-orthodox Judaism but in fact he is a political product of Israeli colonialism, apartheid, & ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It’s not Judaism but Zionism that turned his head upside down. He’s from Modi’in Illit, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank established in 1994 on the land of five Palestinian villages. He had to be at least 19-years-old when he moved there so he has a head stuffed full of entitlement.

News reported that between 2005 & 2014, 17,000 women were murdered in Mexico–much of that likely related to the so-called drug war & military occupation of the country. Between 2003 & 2012, over 18,000 women in the US were murdered by men, over half by intimate partners. Official Indian crime figures estimate over 8,000 women a year are murdered in “dowry deaths & in 2013 there were 106,527 incidents of “cruelty” committed against women by husbands & in-laws. That kind of statistic holds true around the world.

The world can get just too damn much with you; the violence & grief can get overwhelming. That can make cynicism & misanthropy seem appealing rather than rancid & dead-end. Once you lose respect & hope for humanity, there’s no place to go. That’s why Dante put “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” over the gate of hell.

We repeat ad nauseam that children are the future though you wouldn’t know it from the way poor children are treated. But for those who won’t accept the status quo, that’s where our commitment begins–to moving that mantra from sentiment to a determination to make this world suitable for children to live & love in.

Emancipation US-style: the US-NATO war in Afghanistan has been so liberating for women by bombing them out of their homes so they could travel to foreign countries as unwelcome refugees & disperse their unaccompanied children on the dangerous immigrant routes to Europe & Australia where they would be treated like vermin by border patrol. But at least their nails would be done at that beauty salon in downtown Kabul before they left.

Now for at least the last few years, the Pakistani government has been cracking down on the illegal slums where they live outside Islamabad, coming in with riot police & bulldozers to level them to make room for gentrification & redevelopment. The refugees are unable to afford the high rents in the city so built flimsy dwellings with no access to electricity, gas, or water mains. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) which is clearing the slums has no compensation or rehousing plans for the residents, which will make thousands of people, including children, elderly, & infirm, homeless. Many have lived here for nearly forty years after fleeing from the former Soviet invasion. This woman is objecting as the CDA moves in to destroy her home.

Some of the most contentious discussions I’ve had on Facebook were about my support for women wearing the niqab. Many concede it’s part of freedom of religion but insist the women wearing it are controlled by men or religion–or that it’s not really required by Islam. One would think that after thousands of women wearing the niqab led several of the Arab uprisings–most notably in Yemen & Bahrain–there would be more respect for the intelligence & independence of the women & their ability to decide what the hell they wear. I wore a nun’s outfit covering everything but my face for nearly three years & can testify that my brains didn’t fall out & that I even became a feminist while wearing it.

Got another Nostradamus prediction: when Bernie Sanders bombs out of the nomination & throws his support to Clinton, the Sanders revolutionaries will play the scam out with him & move from feigned inspiration to political doggerel: “But if we don’t vote for Clinton, we’ll have another Bush in power.” Like it mattered a rat’s ass! Like they haven’t played it out a dozen times before. Like it isn’t a complete bore already.

This is an Irish Navy ship LE Niamh in the Sicilian harbor of Messina unloading the bodies of 14 refugees ‘found dead’ on a boat off the coast of Libya with more than 450 others. The spokesperson for the Italian coast guard gave no details about how they died. Well since the EU is involved in a naval operation to stop them from crossing, this might be a case of the devil being in the details. Are refugees still drowning with all those naval ships out there? Are they shooting weapons at the boats? Are they adrift, unable to proceed to Italy because of a naval blockade? What the hell is going on since the lives of tens of thousands of people are at stake? People who have beloved who want to know where they are & if they’re safe.

We’re taught to see Hawaii as a vacation paradise to cover up the brutal realities of the US military overthrow & annexation of the archipelago in 1893. Native Hawaiians have been driven out to mainland US where they live in diaspora & squalor while white supremacy manifests in luxury hotels, upscale malls, swanky golf courses.

The stale remake of the old TV drama “Hawaii Five-O” still shows whites in police authority & native Hawaiians only as subordinate & supporting characters.

We’re taught to see Hawaii as a vacation paradise to cover up the brutal realities of the US military overthrow & annexation of the archipelago in 1893. Native Hawaiians have been driven out to mainland US where they live in diaspora & squalor while white supremacy manifests in luxury hotels, upscale malls, swanky golf courses.

The stale remake of the old TV drama “Hawaii Five-O” still shows whites in police authority & native Hawaiians only as subordinate & supporting characters.

The ferocious EU assaults on refugees move from the Mediterranean to Macedonia to Serbia to Hungary to Calais. Here French gendarme/thugs are attacking unarmed refugees with truncheons & pepper spray near the Eurotunnel site at Calais where they are trying to cross into the UK. The refugee camp is called “the new jungle” with a racist insularity & stupidity that boggles the mind.

Whither France of the great democratic revolution against feudalism, of the 1968 revolution? Racism is now so structural to neoliberal capitalism that it has left no country uncorrupted. If refugees are not defended as brothers & sisters, if there is no mass opposition to this reactionary dynamic, all of society will pay the price in repression. It’s a case of chickens coming home to roost.