David vs. Goliath 2012

One can stand in awe of the courage of Palestinians hurling rocks against Israel aggression & military might but one cannot stand silent. Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) Day yesterday marked 64 years since Zionists violently expelled Palestinians from their land & established Israel--& 64 years of Palestinian resistance. Millions live in exile, millions still in refugee camps, those in Gaza, the West Bank, & Israel are under siege. Here Palestinian youth  stand up against the Goliath of Israeli assault weapons outside Ofer military prison on the West Bank--just to defend their right to protest. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement gives everyone a chance to stand with Palestinians in their struggle for a democratic, secular state where all can live in peace. Boycott all Israeli products (barcode 729). (Photo by Bernat Armangue/AP)

Reporters love a parade

They must send their most dull-witted reporters to North Korea since the only things they seem to find newsworthy are the military parades. Are they sure they can’t find something else going on over there that might be of interest to the rest of us!? They captioned this photo, “Spectacles in North Korea exist at the intersection of dogma, tedium and entertainment.” Are they sure they’re not reading too much into the goose step? I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again, you see one goose step, you’ve seen ‘em all, & try as I might, I can’t see communism written all over it--anymore than I can see capitalism in the cancan or the bossa nova. (Photo by Vincent Yu/AP)

Oren’s defensive piece on ‘sinister’ delegitimization movement shows boycott is working

Philip Weiss (Mondoweiss)
Michael Oren is ambassador of Israel to the U.S., which makes him the chief public relations employee of Israel. And he sees the writing on the wall. His piece in the Wall Street Journal is titled "What happened to Israel's reputation?" You can see that he is enraged by Sarah Schulman's pinkwashing piece in the New York Times, you can see that he knows that Israel exhibits "brutal conduct" in war and has demonstrated arrogance with the alleged peace process. He is afraid of BDS. And calls it a more "sinister" tactic than what? Than violence? Yes; he would prefer violence. We don't know how to fight Gandhi, the Israelis say.
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Amazing People Arrested By Terrible People for Doing Something Good

Seven activists, while slightly grungy and a little cliche, were arrested on Monday for feeding homeless people a vegan breakfast in Orlando’s Lake Eola Park. They were not just simply told to disband and take their good-intentioned hippy food with them, they were straight up cuffed and taken to jail.
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“Six Years of BDS – Success!”

British rock musician and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters spray-paints the words “No thought control” on Israel’s West Bank separation barrier in Bethlehem. (Photo: AP)

by Hind Awaad - Ceasefire Magazine - 15 May 2012

As the world watched the Arab Spring, many Palestinians saw traces of Palestine’s revolution, particularly of the first Intifada—the popular uprising of 1987—and in the beautiful spirit of the young revolutionaries.

The fall of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt was celebrated in Palestinian households not only because it promised a return of Arab resistance, a constant dimension of the Palestinian cause but hijacked by the dictatorships for so many years, but also because it was a reminder that Palestine continues to bring people together: those struggling in many places around the world against injustice of all kinds.

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Palestinian prisoners score heroic victory

15 May 2012 — Nearly a month into the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, a historic victory has been achieved, as Israeli authorities were forced to comply with the prisoners’ main demands. Coinciding with the Palestinian commemoration of the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing that uprooted most Palestinians from their homeland around 1948, the prisoners’ victory has heightened hope about the prospects for Palestinian freedom, justice, self determination and the return of refugees.

This important triumph for the Palestinian popular struggle could not have been reached without the unwavering resolve of the prisoners themselves, grassroots mobilization in their support in Palestine, and the immense wave of effective solidarity and calls for holding Israel accountable that the strike has triggered around the world.

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Bid to stop commemoration of Nakba Day in Sydney fails!

In the Daily Telegraph (of all places!) this article:
Palestinian Nakba Day protest in Sydney 'just like Anzac Day', Supreme Court justice rules

Free Palestine protest marchers walk through the streets of the CBD / Pic: Adam Ward Source: The Daily Telegraph

Free Palestine protest marchers walk through the streets of the CBD / Pic: Adam Ward Source: The Daily Telegraph

A BID to stop a pro-Palestinian demonstration was rejected by a Supreme Court justice because it should be treated just like Anzac Day or Australia Day.

In allowing last night's CBD march to go ahead, Justice Christine Adamson said freedom of speech and history was more important than the risk of commuters being inconvenienced.

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An immigrant's journey

This Afghan teenager traveled more than 20 hours in the engine compartment of a car to migrate into Europe but was spotted & arrested by Italian border police in Bari, Italy. Not only did this young man endanger his life but his journey typifies the humiliation & suffering that millions of human beings endure to escape war, find work, survive. He will likely be deported back to Afghanistan; he may well try again. Immigration is a human right. Find a way to add your voice to his struggle. (Photo by Italian Border Police via EPA)

Nakba Day 2012

Palestinian protestors are today commemorating Nakba (“Catastrophe” or “Cataclysm”) Day, the violent & forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands by Zionist colonizers in 1948. Here Israeli cops at the protest in an east Jerusalem Arab neighborhood are arresting a Palestinian boy who looks to be under 10 years of age. The caption to the photo is instructive in the art of propaganda; it reads: “Nakba commemorates the exodus after Israel’s independence in 1948.” Israel’s independence from what!? Even dishonest US histories of the expulsion & extermination of Native Americans don’t declare it a war of  independence. The truth is, Israel is not a solution to anti-semitism & it’s residents will never be free so long as they deny Palestinians self-determination. The only possible solution to this conflict is a democratic, secular state with full rights for all. Support justice for Palestinians by boycotting all Israeli products (barcode 729).  (Photo by Menahem Kahan/AFP)

US & Mexican immigration policy: terrorism

One of the most difficult things for activists today is getting accurate information about what is going on in other countries since media is owned & controlled by a handful of oligarchs. Disinformation is their stock in trade. This difficulty lends itself to conspiratorial & libertarian thinking & has put many people on the wrong side of a struggle in some countries. One example of this, just 10 miles from here, is the Mexican drug war. With US special ops forces & drone flights now deployed in Mexico along with over 45,000 Mexican soldiers, you’d think they’d be making a real hauling of drug gangsters. So it’s remarkable that while few drug traffickers have been killed, arrested, or prosecuted, over 50,000 civilian Mexicans have been killed in shootouts allegedly between the military & the cartels. And in the past few years, there’s been a terrifying increase in gruesome mass killings always blamed by authorities on rivaling drug gangs. The overwhelming evidence however, is that the victims in these mutilations & beheadings are immigrants making their way to the US border. All of them are along the migration route, all are disfigured so identification is impossible. Even a lying-assed media has begun to at least mention that as a possibility. And the likely murderers are US & Mexican military & paramilitary death squads. That’s a speculation for now but mark my words! Demand the US pull its agents & aircraft out of Mexico! Demand the end of racism in US immigration policy! Open the border! (Photo of Mexican soldier by AP)
The Huffington Post

Homeless in Mogadishu

Homeless in Mogadishu, Somalia: nothing more belies the counterterrorism aggression of the UN, African Union troops, & US special forces, CIA rendition prisons, & drone attacks in Somalia than the nearly 2 million homeless people. Many displaced people seek sanctuary in overcrowded refugee camps without sufficient food, medical care, sanitation. Many move into the derelict government buildings of this shattered country, including former ministries, hospitals, schools, shops. Many are left to forage on the street without shelter. Now, just last month the UN-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) without notice began evicting 50,000 squatters in the abandoned buildings to renovate & “build the economy”. And whose economy would that be!? This young boy, who is glue-sniffing, lives under a bridge in Mogadishu & this photo tells you everything you need to know about UN, AU, & US policies in Somalia. Demand the end of all US operations--overt & covert--in Somalia. (Photo by Omar Faruk)

Scavenging for health care

The Chinese medical system is one of the most renowned in the world, employing & often integrating the two entirely different medical systems of traditional Chinese medicine & western medicine. That’s, of course, for the rich & foreigners. China once touted a socialized medicine system which even in the best of times was insufficient & rudimentary, especially in serving the immense rural population. Attempting to provide universal & available health care to 1.3 billion people had many quirky features, including the “barefoot doctors” of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Nevertheless, despite all this, infant mortality fell & life expectancy increased by nearly double. However, when China began “economic reforms” (more appropriately called privatizing) in the early 1980s, the already half-assed system was dismantled & changed to a market-oriented one. In less than a generation, there is near total absence of affordable & available health care for rural residents & the 50% of urban residents who can afford it get it through insurance from employers. The complete failure of the government to provide decent health care for rural people has enforced the idea of two separate nations: one urban & the other rural. But of course the fundamental chasm is between impoverished working people & the parvenus & nouveau riche of the so-called reforms. Without sufficient health care, many infectious diseases like hepatitis, tuberculosis, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crescendo, along with growing outrage. To make it appear they give a damn, in 2009, the Chinese Cabinet passed a medical reform plan to provide universal medical service by 2020. Judging from this photo, they’re a long way behind in schedule. A ninety-year-old mother in Beijing (named Li Xiuying)  here goes through recyclable items to sell which she scavenged on nightly rounds in a shopping district in order to buy medicine for her sick 74-year-old daughter. (Photo by AFP)

Another protest "turned violent" when soldiers tried to run them down

In the media’s determination to report the news without telling the truth about Israeli apartheid & expropriation of the Palestinians, the caption to this photo read, “... a dispute over settlement in the occupied West Bank erupts into tire-burning & stone throwing.” The truth would read, Israeli soldiers use tear gas, water cannons, & rubber bullets against protestors trying to stop Israeli expropriation of their land in the town of Kafr Qaddum, West Bank. The protestors are attacked here by a military vehicle & they burned tires & threw stones to prevent the damn thing from running them over. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP)

Protests on behalf of prisoners sweep the West Bank

Today protests in support of the 2,500 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike reach a new height with demonstrations spreading across the West Bank. Marches were held in Hebron, Kafr Qaddoum, Nablus, Nabi Saleh, Ni’lin, Ramallah, al-Walaja and outside of Ofer prison.
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Back off, plebeians!

People have been making fun of this photo of Betty all day & I’m just plain tired of it. Back off! What’s to ridicule!? She’s a dull-witted girl playing dress-up. So!? Just because that stupid thing on her head  could feed a good share of starving children around the world does not mean we should begrudge her this idiocy of moochocracy. What are you? Killjoys? The real question is how those damn rocks  in pretty colors became of more value than the lives of our beautiful babies. (Photo by Alastair Grant)

Ready for hire

So gracious of BBC Scotland to find something remedial Charley could actually do--read a teleprompter. Only last month, he mastered the art of cutting up colored paper in a kindergarten class so the combination of reading with fine motor skills should make him prepared for an entry level position as the CEO of any corporation, where cutting the jobs of subordinates without evincing human sentiment is the only qualification needed. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA)

How did it come to this!?

There is a disturbing symmetry between the young woman scavenging in this garbage dump for recyclables to sell & the Greater Adjutant storks scavenging for dead animal carcasses. The storks have lost their natural habitats through the draining of wetlands, pollution, hunting, & are now on the endangered list of threatened species & forced to compete with humans (including children rag pickers) in culling through putrid garbage near a wildlife sanctuary on the outskirts of Guwahati, India. By all reports, Assam, (the northeastern state of India where Guwahati is the largest city) is rich in natural beauty & resources, cultural heritage, & political importance. So how did it come to this!? (Photo by EPA)

The distinct whiff of arson

A few years ago, the city of Manila in the Philippines, was in a dispute with ICTSI, a shipping container company (owned by one of the Philippine’s four billionaires, Enrique Razon Jr.), & it’s corporate partner, Hanjin, a Korean container company that also runs the shipyard at Subic Bay, Philippines (notorious for flagrant labor abuses). The city claimed the two firms were illegally reclaiming & refurbishing prime real estate in the Tondo district of Manila, along the rim of Manila Bay, without permits & on untitled, public domain property. Nothing much seems to have come from the official blustering. And that would be that, if the area being illegally reclaimed were not also the site of sprawling squatter’s colonies where thousands of people live. These shantytowns are the scene of many fires going back at least to 2004 which have killed some residents, injured many, & repeatedly dislocated tens of thousands. Many of the residents just move back to the site & rebuild since they have no other place to live. Fire forensics are not reported but the fire chief always recites the litany of causes like his mantra: faulty power lines, overcrowding, flimsy building material, strong winds, & intense summer heat. In the five-alarm fire in Tondo (May 11th), he added to this litany, saying firefighters had trouble fighting the blaze since there are no water hydrants in the area & they couldn’t get water to put it out. A fire-prone area with thousands of residents & no water hydrants? In this conflagration, residents stood on roofs shouting for help which did not come, jumped into the bay to escape, tried to salvage some belongings, get their pets, the elderly, infirm, & children on to makeshift rafts, helped rescue each other. Two residents are still missing & 10,000 are made homeless. The whiff of arson is all over this fire, especially in the context of several forcible evictions in other districts of Manila for purposes of land development & gentrification (orchestrated by Henry Sy, a real estate tycoon & another one of the Philippines four billionaires). The combativeness of Filipinos against these evictions is extraordinary & torching their homes might have seemed the quickest way to get the job done. Housing is a primary human need not available to millions of people worldwide & it must become a central political demand. Money for housing, not for war! And that slogan is as apt in Manila as in the US since militarism is a feature of Filipino political rule. In this photo residents untie the hose on a cement mixer to douse water on the fire. (Photo by Cheryl Ravelo/Reuters)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/may/11/slum-fire-manila-philippines-in-pictures?picture=389997658#/?picture=389997656&index=0

Important petition to defend cultural boycott of Israel

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Allow_artists_to_Boycott/?fUeSlab&pv=13
Please take a moment to sign this petition defending the right of Irish activists to engage in political work in solidarity with Palestinians. Irish activists play a leading role in building solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid. They particularly play a central role in promoting the cultural boycott of Israel by persuading artists not to perform there while Israel is engaged in violence, discrimination, ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. One of their politicians is now waging a public campaign to discredit & weaken the solidarity movement & they need our help to defend their right to carry out this work. This open letter to the government minister clearly lays out their views & their defense: http://www.ipsc.ie/press-releases/minister-abuses-position-in-attacking-human-rights-campaigners

Boycott all Israeli products (barcode 729)

The Palestinian movement has never lacked for courage or tenacity but it has suffered for decades from  Zionist deceits & US & European political & financial support. With the growth of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement around the world & the support of anti-apartheid veterans in South Africa, the solidarity movement has surged forward. But so has Israeli ethnic cleansing & violence against Palestinians. Now 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons are on a hunger strike to protest being held without charge under the procedure of administrative detention allowing Israel to hold suspects indefinitely for renewable periods up to six months. Most began refusing food April 17th to demand improved conditions, access to lawyers, family visits, an end to solitary confinement & administrative detention. Israel is not only rejecting these appeals but is using extreme violence against Palestinian protestors supporting the hunger strikers outside the prisons. Here Palestinians throw stones at Israeli troops using tear gas, water cannons, & stink bombs outside the Israeli military prison at Ofer (Ramallah, West Bank). The European Union, Red Cross, & UN all wring their hands & express concern about these victims of Israeli apartheid but have done nothing that amounts to a hill of beans. Support the hunger strikers by boycotting all Israeli products (barcode 729).  (Photo by Atef Safadi/EPA)