Feminists around the world engaged in the titanic struggles against female oppression, who fight the state for reproductive freedom, against eugenics, employment discrimination, & barbaric violence against women are outraged at media misrepresentation of the movement as a white, middle-class, elitist project to break something called the “glass ceiling.” Most women are trying to get out of the minimum wage classification. We’re outraged that radicals demean & attempt to turn feminism into a campaign to legitimize prostitution, porn, & naked protests. But mostly we’re outraged that governments attempt to use women’s rights to justify war & genocide & use Islamophobia as a key element in that campaign.

Right-wing feminists, many of them huddled behind MS magazine, attempt to portray US wars as a crusade to liberate women. It’s no accident that many of them are also Zionists. The struggle against racism & social hatred is part of feminism, not at odds with it. But reactionary forces, connected to power through the Democratic Party, try to associate feminism with elitism, Islamophobia & war. Those feminists who reject social hatred must wrench the movement back from those who use it to serve neoliberal barbarism.

Today, Zionists are boasting of advances for women’s rights in Israel because 28 women were elected to the Knesset. Do those 28 women have the same politics as Netanpsycho? Do they stand with women’s rights for Palestinian as well as Israeli women or are they also racist up to their eyeballs? Do they make the face of Israeli apartheid a kinder, gentler thing or do they oppose it? Where do they stand on the embargo & carpet bombing of Gaza & on the settlements in the West Bank?

Last week, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, gave a touching speech to the General Assembly on women’s empowerment. Well if would have been touching if he didn’t include snide Islamophobic slurs & didn’t lie through his teeth about the status of women in Israel. He brought up stoning & honor killings & asked “Where else in the Middle East do you see women’s empowerment like you do in Israel?” Does he mean because women soldiers carry guns & participate in occupying Palestine? Because if you look at the reality of women’s lives in Israel, you can see our man is talking through his ass.

In the speech that would have been touching if there was an ounce of truth to it, Prosor said Israeli women “didn’t just break the glass ceiling; they shattered it.” But statistics speak louder than baloney: they show that Israeli women at the executive level earn 30% less than males & among ordinary working women, 25% less. And that doesn’t even address unemployment among Palestinian Israelis, Ethiopian Jews, & African refugees due to discrimination. Overall one in five Israelis live below the poverty line, giving Israel the highest poverty rate & one of the biggest income disparities between rich & poor of all the plundering countries.

It’s the same story with reproductive freedom in Israel. Abortion is only legal under certain circumstances & requires the approval of a committee. That’s bad enough but in 2013 Israel admitted to giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth control injections without their knowledge or consent, i.e., forced sterilization. As for prenatal care, for the past few years, Israel has been instituting austerity policies cutting back even more on social services–most importantly in health care for the poorest. With racism & ethnic cleansing as state policy, Bedouin Israelis are completely denied access to prenatal care, explaining their sky-high infant mortality rate.

There is one growth industry for women which Prosor didn’t mention: prostitution in Israel is a $500 million a year business. And homelessness is growing because Israel has a bloated military budget to sustain rather than build affordable housing.

So will the 28 women in the Knesset address the racism & misogyny of Israeli politics? Will they oppose apartheid, militarism, austerity, inequity, & genocide & forge alliances with Palestinians & African refugees against the regime? Because if they stand with apartheid, genocide, & neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, who gives a damn what gender they are!?

This photo is an Israeli homeless woman & her child in Jerusalem, Israel (2012) where there was an encampment of homeless people.

(Photo by Abir Sultan/EPA)

The Israeli elections weigh heavy on those who believe strongly in human rights so we need to step back to gain perspective & nourish our spirit with the things that make the human race so worth fighting for.

This magnificent photo is from an album called “The Roma Journeys” taken in India in 2001. Joakim Eskildsen, the photojournalist, traveled to several countries (between 2000 & 2006) including Finland, France, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Russia, India to gain “insight into the life of the Roma & the conditions they face.” The history of Roma always begins with their origins in northern India but few accounts report that many still live there.

Eskildsen said he didn’t know what triggered his interest in the Roma but after spending considerable time with them & getting to know them, the more his interest & affection for them grew.
There’s something very special about young girls at this age. They’re independent, feisty, often lippy, & full of exuberance before the weight of misogyny begins to bear down on them. Their names are Kamla, Mariam, Zarina, Manissa, & Sabnam. They’re in their twenties now. May their lives be blessed in every way.

(Photo by Joakim Eskildsen)

After election results in Israel today, Gideon Levy, the Israeli journalist, wrote an article in Haaretz entitled, “Netanyahu deserves the Israeli people, & they deserve him: If after everything, the Israeli phoenix succeeded in rising from the ashes & getting reelected, something is truly broken, possibly beyond repair.”

The article is more than plaintive; it’s a jeremiad. Levy says “The results are indicative of the direction the country is headed: A significant proportion of Israelis has finally grown detached from reality. This is the result of years’ worth of brainwashing & incitement.”

We knew that when we saw people pulling up easy chairs in the hills of Sderot to watch genocide in Gaza like it was a spectator sport. We understand Levy’s grief since he is a long-time impassioned opponent of Zionist settlements & ethnic cleansing. He calls himself a “patriotic Israeli” but rejects the bantustate solution as apartheid & calls for a democratic secular state but views it almost like a hopeless cause because of racism & rancor. He’s got a lot of evidence to support that cynicism.

One cannot deny the profound racism & mass psychosis of applauding genocide. One cannot pretend away the irrationality that insists opposition to Zionism is social hatred of Jews. But whatever their political dissonance, Israeli working people are not living in the promised land. Zionism is coming up empty handed for them. The concentrated fury directed at Palestinians is an attempt to resolve the deadly combination of Zionist false hopes & neoliberal austerity on the backs of Palestinians.

You can’t address that problem with sermons & pieties; it must be met with power, massive power–the power of Intifada combined with international solidarity, the power of BDS that extracts consequences for siding with genocide & apartheid. When you stand with the oppressed there’s no room for equivocations or mollycoddling the obtuse.

Will achieving this be easy? When has wrenching social transformation ever been easy? There was no sicker society than the US in the era of Jim Crow (the US form of apartheid). It was putrid with social hatred. The history is one of the ugliest in all of human history. The power of the Civil Rights Movement cut through that crap & transformed society. There’s been a regression which needs to be studied by the erupting civil rights movement but what’s important is that power & not bending to tyranny can change people. The social mysticism & hatred that blinds seems to fall away.

We should not buckle one iota to Zionism or let Israelis off the hook for supporting it in Netanpsycho. We need to build massive political pressure on them through exposing the lies & building BDS. But it’s way too early to give up on them. That’s not wishful thinking but a political perspective.

The caption to this photo read “Israeli border policemen & soldiers detain a Palestinian protester during a protest against what Palestinians say is land confiscation by Israel for Jewish settlements, near the West Bank town of Abu Dis near Jerusalem March 17, 2015.”

“What Palestinians say is land confiscation”–just like Gaza was bombed to smithereens ‘according to witnesses or Hamas officials who claim it was done by Israeli bombers’. Toying with language is another way of lying & making an ass of yourself at the same time. In 67 years of Zionist colonialism they can’t just say outright that Palestinians are protesting because Zionist settlers guarded by Israeli soldiers are destroying their olive trees, poisoning their water wells, beating up & arresting their kids, taking over their farm lands?

Who the hell does media think they’re kidding when they’re also full of accounts about settlements in the West Bank? When Netanpsycho made more settlements a selling point in his campaign? Whose land are they building those settlements on in occupied Palestine? Are they going to claim some patriarch was buried there 3,000 years ago & they have a Biblical land grant to the property?

Get real! And build the economic & cultural boycott (BDS) of Israel.

(Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)

Netanpsycho reportedly swept the Israeli elections & this is a very bad sign. Not because the alternatives would have rejected apartheid & ethnic cleansing but because it signifies popular support for extreme barbarism against Palestinians.

Media reports that this puts Israel at sharper odds with US policy, especially over accelerated Zionist settlements in the West Bank. How do they explain away the press release out of the Obama White House just a few weeks ago where his regime boasted they gave millions more of military aid to Israel during Operation Ethnic Cleansing last summer? Where they explained they gave millions to transport Zionist settlers to Israel, for temporary housing when they arrived, & for Hebrew language courses in Palestine where Arabic is the first language?

We cannot be daunted by this regrettable election result but only more determined to build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS) & to demand no aid of any kind to that barbarous colonial state.

Long live Intifada! Take it international! Build BDS!

These students & activists in Mogadishu, Somalia are protesting the illegal poaching operation of Italian fishing vessels in Somali waters. For years, all we read about was the threat of Somali pirates to international shipping by hijacking ships & demanding ransom for their return. But much of the “piracy” was directed at foreign vessels over-fishing Somali waters & destroying the livelihood of local fishermen.

Somalia is located in the Horn of Africa on the Gulf of Aden entering the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal–a major international shipping route with an estimated 25,000 ships transiting annually to the Suez Canal. Its strategic location in Africa & in proximity to the Arabian Peninsula has given it special importance in colonialism (it was both British & Italian colonies), in the Cold War conflict between the US & Soviet Union, & in modern neoliberal plunder. And of course, the US claims it is now an “Islamist” & Al-Qaeda stronghold to justify drone bombing the country. If you look at a map, you can see it forms something of a military phalanx (including Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, & Bahrain) for advancing US military interests in the Middle East.

The World Bank & IMF have been there since the 1980s jacking around their economic & political life & prepping it for the devastation of endless US military incursions. Those barbaric incursions were glorified in the book & film “Black Hawk Down” about a battle between the US & Somali forces to portray colonial depredation as battlefield glory. (Those familiar with WWII movies will know the score.) For no apparent reason other than racism & to create a primitive image, local political leaders in Somalia who oppose US incursions are referred to as “warlords.”

According to a 1997 Greenpeace report & other investigations, Swiss & Italian companies brokered for European companies dumping hazardous waste in Somali waters. They worked with corrupt Somali government officials & other criminal elements called “warlords” to dump the waste in coastal waters or bury it along the coastline. According to that report, just between 1994 & 1998 there were over 10 million tons of hazardous waste dumps, including radioactive material. The Ecologist journal reported in 2009 that since 1991, 35 million tons of waste had been exported to Somalia in exchange for $6.6 billion dollars to government officials & “warlords.”

When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit, waste containers washed up on the shores of Somalia. A 2005 UN environmental report said the hazardous waste deposits stirred up by the tsunami contaminated groundwater & caused health problems in the surrounding fishing communities, including respiratory infections, dry heavy coughing & mouth bleeding, abdominal hemorrhages, skin infections, & sudden death from inhaling toxic fumes.

Somali pirates originally formed as coastguard militia to protect fishing waters from foreign vessels taking advantage of the anarchy & chaos created by World Bank & IMF plunder & US military incursions to illegally fish & dump toxic waste. Media often refers to them as vigilantes but when the US destroyed the Somali government, that included an effective coast guard to protect Somali waters from poaching & toxic waste dumping. Of course what really rankled the US & European regimes about Somali pirates from the outset was their armed self-defense against colonial depredations. Such a thing could easily get out of hand & turn to effective armed insurrection against the US military.

From available reports, which are often laden with racism & vested interests, it’s hard to tell what is going on with Somali piracy today. With millions of ransom extracted on hijacked ships (an estimated $1 to 2 million per boat), it’s likely bigger forces of Somali & foreign capitalism got involved. Pirate fleets are now reportedly equipped with rocket launchers, GPS systems & satellite equipment & you have to ask who is supplying that equipment. Reportedly the insurance industry for shipping has found Somali piracy quite a bonanza by jacking up the premiums.

It’s estimated that Somali piracy employs thousands who go to sea, repair boats, supply food but they’re still coming out on the short end. Somalis may collect up to $100 million annually from extracting ransoms on hijacked ships but European & Asian trawlers poach an estimated $300 million annually in fish from Somali waters.

The US & European Union navies run counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden & have arrested dozens of Somalis who get prosecuted in European & US courts & are handed draconian sentences. Since colonialism has destroyed the court & legal system in Somali they are tried in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Yemen, Belgium, the US where they can’t possibly get a fair trial.

Justice demands we stand with the students & activists in Mogadishu not just in opposing poaching & waste dumping but in demanding the US get the hell out of Somalia–lock, stock, & bomber.

(Photo by Feisal Omar/Reuters)

Do you think there really might be a “vast right-wing conspiracy” trying to bring Hillary Clinton down? Good! Now she knows how we feel.

Some people don’t like satire & think it cruel. But that’s exactly what’s so endearing about it. At its best, in words & image it skewers power & pretense combining vengeance with hilarity.

This is a depiction of Margaret Thatcher by English cartoonist Gerald Scarfe–although this is less her caricature than a psychological profile. The poor thing was an elitist, vicious mess & might better have been institutionalized with the criminally insane. There was international jubilation when she finally croaked. Not unlike when Omar Suleiman was iced. Or the anticipated festivities when Henry Kissinger drops.

It isn’t easy to be lacerating & sarcastic in cartoons & also disguise your racism or misogyny & you see that often in caricatures of people like Hillary Clinton, Obama, & Netanpsycho. There isn’t a reason in the world to stay away from going after them; you just have to eschew the cliches of elitism & supremacy. Scarfe did a damn good job. We need to sic him on Clinton & Obama. He’s already taken out Netanpsycho. They should be faulted for making such good material for satire.

The graffiti behind the pedestrian is dedicated to the Jewish holocaust in Salonika (also known as Thessaloniki), a port on the Aegean Sea in northeastern Greece. The city, which is the second largest in Greece & a major economic, industrial, commercial, & political center, has a complex 2,300 year history covering the Roman, Byzantine, & Ottoman Empires.

In 1941, during WWII, the German Nazi army occupied Greece & began rounding up Jews for deportation on cattle cars to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland. They deported & exterminated an estimated 60,000 Jews. Very few escaped their dragnet.

Jews have a long history in Solonika, including a massive influx of Sephardic Jews from Spain to escape the Inquisition in the 15th century. It was a politically dynamic population that in the late 19th century, along with the rest of the world, began to become industrialized & a Jewish working class developed.

Under the leadership of a remarkable guy named Avraam Benaroya (b. 1887), a Bulgarian Jewish immigrant, they formed the Socialist Workers’ Federation in 1909 which became the strongest socialist party in the Ottoman Empire. Benaroya was a bone-deep internationalist who opposed Zionism which was very weak in Jewish politics at that time & opposed the First World War. He split from the socialist movement over their support for the war & helped form the Greek Communist Party. His tenure there didn’t last very long–apparently due to the Stalinizing regime of communist parties. He suffered exile, imprisonment, & survived a Nazi concentration camp.

He had an extraordinary, stressful, & complex political life & certainly deserves a biography. He was a stalwart opponent of antisemitism & every kind of nationalist chauvinism & oppression in the labor movement. There’s no indication he ever became a Zionist though he moved to Israel to retire in 1953 at the age of 66. He died in 1979 at the age of 92.

Jews in Salonika commemorate the holocaust which devastated their community. Regrettably Jewish politics there today are very much influenced by Zionism. We don’t let that stop us from taking a moment to honor those 60,000 people trucked like cattle to a horrific fate based on genocidal social hatred & to honor activists like Avraam Benaroya whose contributions should never be forgotten.

(Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)

The families of these three young men among the 43 disappeared student teachers of Ayotzinapa in the Mexican state of Guerrero spoke today in McAllen,Texas. They’re on the first leg of a nationwide US tour to tell the truth about what happened to their beloved sons, to build solidarity & international pressure on the Mexican government to return their sons safely & as Jose’s mother said, “just as when they took them.”

The testimony of the three family members was powerful, direct, & very personal. They described that they are farmworkers in Mexico with children & a living to earn but were taking this time, despite fear of government reprisals, to fight for the return of their children. They believe & made a compelling case that their sons are still alive in one of Mexico’s clandestine prisons. They are not just expressing wishful thinking but have the assistance of an Argentine forensics team & six international experts on forced disappearances.

Their testimonies cut through the government lies reported in media & made it absolutely clear the Mexican military abducted their children at the behest of top state officials. They hold the governor of Guerrero & Mexican President Peña Nieto as guilty as the mayor of Iguala who may have ordered the hit & the military who carried it out. Mexican officials have piled lie on top of lie to deflect responsibility away from them. They claim corrupt municipal cops handed the 43 students to drug cartel thugs who killed them, incinerated their bodies, & dumped them in the river. The families tell a different story.

On September 26th 2014, the students were on a mission to raise donations in Iguala for an October 2nd trip to Mexico City–ironically to join the annual commemoration of the 1968 Tlatelolco police massacre of hundreds of protesting students. In a police assault on the Ayotzinapa bus, six students were murdered & many injured. One student had his face ripped off & was thrown to the side of the road; one was in a vegetative state & taken to the hospital “eventually.” The many injured sought medical help but the doctor who did not want to treat them phoned the municipal police who instead sent the military–the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican army based in Iguala.

When the military arrived at the hospital, they confiscated cell phones from students (taunting them “If this is what you want, take it like a man”) & abducted them. Jose’s mother said she phoned her son’s cell several times on the morning of the 27th. The person answering said her son was detained. Officials of the 27th Battalion claim they witnessed the police attack but did not intervene. And the parents believe they are lying through their teeth.

Family & human rights protesters have held protests at the army garrison of the 27th Battalion but are being stonewalled by the military & the Peña Nieto regime. If they are ever to see their sons again the broadest international solidarity must be built & the families are determined to do that. Christian’s father said they have been invited to speak in Poland, Germany, & the Philippines, as they are presently on the US tour. If activists around the world cannot afford to finance a speaking tour they could consider holding forums using Skype.

“An injury to one is an injury to all” is a simple declaration but it is the iron law of social transformation. Disappearance is a human rights crime in over 30 countries including thousands of victims. The young men of Ayotzinapa were abducted because they were activists against social tyranny. We need to do what we can to help their families get them back.

(If anyone wants to contribute money for the tour, please let me know & I will give you contact info.)