If many remain hopelessly confused about the struggle between Palestinians & Israel, it is because media around the world work tirelessly to make us stupid. But the truth is now erupting; the lies were bombed to smithereens by Israel last summer.

This is the father of 19-year-old Mohammed Alawneh at his son’s funeral today in the West Bank village of Bruqin. Young Alawneh was shot & killed by Israeli soldiers “when clashes broke out with residents” after troops raided the village to make arrests & residents threw stones at them. The Israeli military called the stone-throwing a “violent riot” & claimed troops called on the crowd to stop hurling rocks “before they opened fire at the main culprit.” Opened fire on a guy throwing rocks!?

The caption to this photo read “Palestinian children play on a swing near the rubble of buildings, reportedly destroyed during the 50-day war between Israel & Hamas militants in the summer of 2014, in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.” You can sure pack a lot of baloney into one short sentence.

Media is just going to have to get over the delusion they’re kidding us. The entire world stood witness to Israel’s barbaric siege of Gaza. It was Israeli bombers, not evil fairies from outer space that destroyed Gaza & reduced it to rubble. There was no war but a genocide. What else do you call it when the most sophisticated & powerful military in the world goes after unarmed civilians? As for Hamas rockets taking out Israeli targets? Show us the proof? Take a few pictures of all the alleged damage–& a few potholes in Sderot won’t cut it.

There’s a funny thing about love–it’s just blooming all the time. Nothing stops it. That’s one of those things that lets you know the human race is worth fighting for. Either that or we’re nuts.

This is a group wedding of 150 couples in Beit Lahiya, Gaza. The little girls accompany the grooms who are sitting separate from their brides. Group weddings are performed all over the world for couples who can’t afford their own extravaganza. This one was funded by al-Basheer Society for Relief & Development.

Say what you like about American democracy but Donald Trump says it best. He’s a one-man train wreck & it must be said the perfect foil to the humorless Bernie Sanders–neither of whom stands a chance in hell of winning the nomination. Wouldn’t a debate between them just bring down the house!?

It’s going on nearly 10 months since the Mexican military disappeared 43 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college. In March, their families embarked on a caravan across the US to build solidarity & put pressure on the US & Mexican governments to return the young men in the same condition they were abducted.

It’s still possible to protest in the US without being disappeared whereas in Mexico over 30,000 have been disappeared in the past several years with the direct involvement of the regime bankrolled by the US Pentagon.

Building & maintaining the antiwar movement–necessarily a permanent fixture in US political life–is a monumental undertaking. It requires meetings; outreach to student, community, church, women’s, civil rights, immigrant rights, LGBT groups; fundraising; leafletting events to build rallies; brokering dissension & differing political methods; finding venues for forums; getting permits for rallies & marches; negotiating with police departments & officials over march routes; getting speakers at events to represent the breadth of the antiwar movement; negotiating through election periods when activity declines; coordinating by state, nationally, & internationally.

We need to replace that nonsense about the “banality of evil” (which has no application anywhere in politics or social life) with the evil of banality which is the hallmark of US electoral politics. The only relief in tedium is rendered by leftists forming a salvation army behind Bernie Sanders so they can ‘organize a political revolution against the billionaire class.’

So they parse itsy-bitsy irrelevant distinctions–like Clinton uttered “Black lives matter,” Sanders had a hard time getting those three words out of his mouth, & Martin O’Malley uttered them with equivocation. There’s no fetish or talisman attached to those words. They’re a political battle cry to the emerging civil rights movement, not something politicians can toy with for electoral expedience.

Radicals who support Democrats, even the coy types like Sanders, parse irrelevancies as a substitute for political analysis. It’s more a comedy schtick than politics. If you want to vote Democrat, go for it. Don’t cover your ass with left rhetoric. That just renders you pathetic.

Let’s dispense with this John McCain war hero crap. He was a naval pilot who flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam & was shot down by a missile over Hanoi in 1967. He probably was roughed up in the Hanoi prison. More’s the pity. Our sympathy is blunted by his continuous maneuverings around the closing of Guantanamo & other CIA torture prisons. That doesn’t make Donald Trump less of a bonehead but war hero, my ass!

Media is favorably reporting the launching of a new joint project by John Prendergast, a US operative in Africa, & his celebrity stooge/shill George Clooney. The two go back several years now war-mongering against Sudan over the issue of Darfur. The new initiative called The Sentry is ostensibly to map the network of war profiteering in South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, The Central African Republic, & the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They’re launching the project under cover of the Enough Project, a front group run by former officials in the Clinton administration, including Prendergast. In 2010, under the umbrella of Enough, Clooney & Prendergast launched a satellite surveillance program in the same region ostensibly as part of a rapid response system to “deter mass atrocities.”

Prendergast is a telling study in how covert agents operate & how governments preempt & use the language of human rights to advance a military & neoliberal colonial agenda. Prendergast is touted all over media as a human rights activist in Africa–another great white savior. There isn’t a media genre he hasn’t invaded in his safari outfits & where he isn’t treated like a self-sacrificing hero: he does opeds, articles, news interviews, documentaries, books, even “Law & Order” episodes.

For over 25 years he has been involved in Sudan, Darfur, & claims he was instrumental in the secession of South Sudan into a separate country. You can bet your bottom dollar, he’s involved in the chaos & trauma of the entire region–with Chinese oil exploration a primary concern. He weighed in heavy on the side of “Kony 2012” about Uganda & was likely involved in the making of that ill-fated political mockumentary which led to the deployment of US troops to Uganda.

If you take a close look at who this guy answers to you’ll see his humanitarian credentials stink to high heaven. His collaborators include Obama, the Clintons, Susan Rice, the National Security Council, & several foundations that are nothing but fronts for US foreign policy in Africa. In other words, his mission is to advance US economic & military interests in Africa, not human rights, & nothing he says can be trusted.

The problem with dragging out a shill like Clooney is that our humanitarian war-monger has never spoken out against US wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. He’s never denounced US bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. He hasn’t said boo about the plight of millions of refugees from Africa drowning in the Mediterranean. His tender heart & indignation only beat in sync with US militarism & the Pentagon.

The case for US military engagement in Africa is being built–lie by lie, with phony documentaries, movie stars & everything else they can marshall–& the surveillance apparatus is being set up under the guise of human rights. This bogus & war mongering campaign must be answered with a resounding, “Hands off Africa”.

(Photo is mug shot of John Prendergast by Jeff Trussell)

Not to be a know-it-all, but I have an observation from long years of activism that may prove useful to younger activists finding this a hard time to get things moving. Election years kick the bejeezus out of independent political action; things get slower than molasses when many activists & people in general start focusing on candidates. That’s likely true in other countries as well.

That’s no reason at all to cancel actions but expectations need be more modest & perhaps actions more creative–& activists need be careful not to turn frustrations on each other.

By more creative actions, it doesn’t mean activists have to stand naked on main street bouncing balls off their heads like trained seals to garner media attention but perhaps forums, teach-ins, etc.–though small rallies are still effective.

There are wars to oppose & BDS to build & we can’t wait for the next president to disprove all our hopes again before we act.