Palangan, Iran

This little Kurdish girl stands in the yard where she lives in Palangan, a village in the Kurdistan Province of Iran. Spread over both sides of a valley, all the stone houses are near-vertical & like a staircase, the roof of one house serves as the yard for the house above. If you look past her beauty, you can see the amazing houses in the background. (Photo by Amos Chapple, a New Zealand photographer)

French presidential slate

Monsieur "Pepe Le Pew" Psychozy is not in this line-up of French presidential candidates but the rest of the appalling gang is there. What does it say about the state of democracy when candidate slates are drawn from the cartoons? For US voters, there's a shameful sense of relief that buffoonery & idiocy aren't unique to US electoral politics. How can the way forward be through the ballot box when elections are so much like comedy routines & clown shows? Whatever happened to the great French Revolution?

Atrocities are the legacy of war

We deserve a place in heaven not just for all the bull we’ve had to listen to justifying endless US wars but the grief of seeing generations of our young men & women inculcated with racism, trained as killers, set loose on civilian populations, & the horror of knowing these atrocities are done in our name. In the past few months, in Afghanistan alone, US soldiers urinated on Afghan corpses, desecrated religious beliefs by burning the Quran like garbage, massacred & burned 17 people & then denied the victims justice in a court of law. Ritual apologies slobber from Obama & the Pentagon. Now, a US soldier has released 18 photos to the LA Times showing US combatants posing gleefully on two different occasions with Afghan corpses & body parts. There is a pattern of atrocities because war creates monsters & kill teams--& no one knows that better than the Afghan people who have suffered unspeakable depredations at the hands of the US military. The Times has complied with a US military request not to publish the photos. This censorship isn’t because they think we haven’t the stomach for the macabre character of the crimes depicted but because the photos would strengthen popular opposition to the war. The Times article explaining their censorship is a masterpiece of apologia attributing the barbarism to a breakdown in military discipline because soldiers felt vengeful about losing buddies in suicide bombings. Next to the apologetics they’ve placed a photo montage of US soldiers killed in Iraq & Afghanistan going back to 2001. One wonders why they stopped there. Why not go back to WWI? That’ll really work up some sympathy for barbarous retributions. So while elementary justice is denied the Afghan victims of the recent massacre, US soldiers are allowed to wreak revenge & have our sympathies for doing so. The Pentagon has promised one of their criminal investigations but these are nothing but black holes for justice. We will deserve a place in hell if we do not gather in numbers to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO troops from Afghanistan. This photo is of Afghans protesting outside a NATO base against the massacre of 17 civilians. (Photo by Mustafa Khan/European Pressphoto Agency)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-photos-20120418,0,6471010,full.story

Ilan Pappe: Israel rides the rollercoaster of mass hysteria

Ilan Pappe for the Electronic Intifada:
"Spending a week in Israel these days is like being trapped within a scene from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Like Jack Nicholson in the lead role of that classic film, you might not be insane but the doctors and nurses who run the psychiatric ward manufacture every few minutes a collective hysteria to keep everyone in the grip of fear and hatred. Everyone is an enemy, every a visitor an existential threat.

A retired French activist in her sixties — part of the most recent Welcome to Palestine fly-in — is met in the airport by a military brigade and massive police force that left much of Israel at the mercy of its petty criminals who had a field day while the officers of the law went to arrest the invading aliens who came from Europe.

A week earlier, a poem by an 85-year-old honest and noble Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, which warned against an Israeli attack on Iran and pleaded with the Israelis to show compassion towards the occupied Palestinians, was depicted as a text that is not only worse than Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf but one that could have a similar impact on history. Hence, the national response was entrusted to the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai who banned the entry of the ageing bard."

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Barghouti to U.S. Jews: You don’t like the word apartheid, but what do you call a system that gives a settler 50 times more water than a Palestinian?

Mustafa Barghouti:

What is apartheid? Apartheid is a system where you have two laws, two different laws, for two people living in the same area. If you don’t like the word apartheid, give me an alternative to a situation where a Palestinian citizen is allowed to use no more than 50 cubic meters of water per capital year, while an Israeli illegal settler from the West Bank is allowed to use 2400. How would you classify a situation where the Israeli gdp per capita is about $30,000 while a Palestinian's gdp per capita is less than $1400?

Yet we are obliged to pay the same prices for products as Israelis do. More than that: We are obliged to pay double the price for electricity and water that Israelis do though they make 30 times more than we do.

Segregation of roads is another issue. This is the last place on earth, actually the first place on earth where people have been segregated with roads. I'm talking about roads in the West Bank, major roads are exclusive to Israeli settlers or army or Israeli citizens.

I cannot describe to you to the level of violation of human rights.. we’ve left to see Israeli army using dogs against our nonviolent settlers in the most vicious way. Which reminds us of what happened during the Segregation system here in the United States.

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Purple rain

Government employees in Jammu & Kashmir staged a strike in Srinagar, India on Tuesday against the state government & demanding payment of arrears in wages, that all temporary employees be made permanent, & to raise the retirement age by two years (from 58 to 60). The government came out full force, deploying riot & paramilitary police, setting up barricades to prevent strikers from assembling, & using water hoses with purple water against strikers--presumably to identify those who eluded barriers. Over a dozen workers were injured & 150 arrested during the protest. Some headlines declared “Police break up state employees’ protest in Srinagar”, while others said, “Employees’ strike paralyses work in government offices”. All evidence points to the latter. Shopkeepers were forced to close their shops after the colored water interfered with business & they expressed strong objection to its use. Water cannons are extremely aggressive weapons causing a number of injuries including to eyes, internal organs, & broken bones. It’s not entirely certain why they added the color but you can bet your bottom dollar it isn’t for a good reason & is probably quite toxic. The strikers say they’ll be back in early May to resume their fight. It’s not clear why these workers are fighting to raise the retirement age. It appears to be a controversial question among the workers involved & certainly is contrary to other countries where there is strong opposition to IMF insistence on raising the retirement age. (Photo by Farooq Khan/EPA)

Trompe-l'oeil to trump the generals

After police attacks on protestors last November & December in Tahrir Square, which killed over 50 people, the military junta of Egypt (SCAF) had concrete walls built around the boulevards entering Tahrir square to prevent protesters from gathering. People who lived in the area had to go through mazes of barriers just to get home. To fight the barriers, graffiti artists who participated in the revolution organized a series of No Walls protests (in March) turning the several walls into trompe-l’oeil murals depicting the streets hidden behind the barriers complete with trees, lampposts, pavement. This is the mural on Sheikh Rihan Street entering Tahrir. “If they play with walls, we will play with the mind. They put up a wall but we don’t see it,” said Amr Nazeer, a graffiti artist who participated in the No Walls campaign. The artists work fast to show the work before it is removed by authorities. Central Cairo has now become an exhibition of resistance art including a memorial with portraits of protestors who died at the hands of riot cops, scenes depicting street battles, the face of Samira Ibrahim, the woman who took the military to court over forced virginity tests of female detainees, & caricatures of the ruling generals.  (Photo by Mosa’aberising)

US-NATO out of Afghanistan!

After 30 years of war, Afghanistan has created a national industry of orphaned & abandoned children with now two million orphans & about half a million children disabled by war injuries (including land mines). Despite the huge population of war victims, the Afghan government has no social security provisions at all for widows, orphans, or disabled. It operates two major Oliver Twist-esque orphanages in Kabul & about 20 smaller projects elsewhere in the country which care for about 10,000 children in conditions of overcrowding, understaffing, spoiled food, lack of heat, broken plumbing. Non-profits & private agencies run some orphanages but over 600,000 children still sleep on the streets subject to starvation, predation, drugs, human trafficking, violence, & early death. This forlorn child resides in an orphanage in Kabul. Such appalling statistics & crimes against children demand that US claims of emancipating women & children be investigated by the media. Instead reporters are chock-a-block evaluating the ring on Jolie’s finger, Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” parties, & every loathsome detail of the secret service Cartagena-gate scandal of interest only to the prurient & divorce attorneys. Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO troops. And don't waste your trust on Obomba to end this war. He serves the war industry, not the children of Afghanistan. (Photo by Massoud Hossaini)

Mitt makes Ken look good

The comparison may be regrettable but it is also undeniable. The only discernible difference is that Ken & Barbie have more personality. Privilege has not served the Romneys but only made them more dull-witted than the icons of idiocy in US culture.

Close Guantanamo!

Here you see a photo of the only interesting thing that went on at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia--unless you think photos of Clinton doing the disco & getting sloshed are interesting. Student groups & labor unions protest with a banner that says, “Close Guantanamo”. The US considered the summit contentious since they couldn’t get agreement to exclude Cuba from the next summit meeting. You’d think a country that ran a notorious concentration camp on one end of Cuba (& in several other countries) would be timorous about denouncing a country whose worst offense is training thousands of doctors to serve poor communities around the world. But the US has an oligarchy without shame. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes)

Obama sandbagged in Cartagena

Apparently, the US feels it was sandbagged at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia--not by misbehaving agents but by Latin American political leaders who see their countries torn up by violence & corruption from drug trafficking to the immense customer base in the US. These leaders think legalizing drugs in the US would reduce the crime associated with black market trade, which is the consensus of anybody with half a brain. But when you go up against the black market in drugs in this day & age, you’re going up against international capital & drug profiteering.  As a representative of US capital, Obama argued against legalization for reasons he was unable to publicly state: trillions of dollars in laundered drug monies prop up US & international banking; the “war on drugs” is an invaluable political weapon to attack the Bill of Rights in the Black & immigrant communities (where 4th Amendment protections against illegal search & seizure & probable cause are usurped with impunity). Legalizing drugs is only a small part of the solution to the drug problem; massive health & addiction programs are important along with making the world a suitable place to live in. But to argue that legalization is not part of the solution or claim it will not reduce the extreme violence generated by the black market suggests your mind is all doped up on something a lot more noxious than pot. (Photo of Obama on giant screen by John Vizcaino)

Goose-stepping in Pyongyang

Seldom a day goes by lately when photojournalist albums don’t show North Korean soldiers goose-stepping up a storm in a military parade. The images are probably meant to evoke Hitler & fascism & certainly to show the martial & bellicose character of North Korea--although the propaganda value is probably limited by the fact that you see one goose-stepper, you’ve seen them all. The soldiers may do a lot of marching over there but it’s only through the public squares & up & down the streets of Pyongyang. They haven’t yet crossed the border. You don’t see them marching, moving tanks, building bases, bombing in a dozen other countries like the US & NATO do. What bugs the media about these martial displays is that North Korea appears to be willing & able to mount resistance to any US-NATO schemes. (Photo by Pedro Ugarte/AFP)

Israeli commandos prevent terrorist attack. Netanyahu: “It was almost another Holocaust!”

Norman Finkelstein

Truth is the first casualty of war

Afghan children sit inside a garbage bin next to their house in Kabul. Afghan children have one of the highest levels of chronic malnutrition in the world according to a World Bank report & despite billions of dollars in aid poured into the country. Children playing in garbage dumps is more compelling evidence of how Clinton & the US-NATO occupation have emancipated women & their children. This is even greater evidence of how truth is the first casualty of war.  (Photo by Omar Sobhani)

Afghan women respond to emancipation with addiction

As her term as Secretary of State nears an end, media is increasingly filled with tributes to Hillary Clinton along with movie stars & women’s groups feting her for emancipating women in Afghanistan. She’s now lauded as the most respected woman in the US. Has this country become a psycho state? Clinton has paid no role in women’s rights in Afghanistan or the US or anywhere else. She has done nothing to address the attacks on reproductive freedom anywhere. Her sole function has been to preempt feminism as a social movement & turn it into an elite activity conducted at expensive conferences which blow hot air & exclude women from acting on their own behalf. When you put aside hero worship, sucking up to power, & war propaganda, all the evidence speaks for itself. The women of Afghanistan give the most powerful testimony against the shameful lies. Here a drug addict holds her child at a drug rehab center in Kabul. This UN-operated agency can only afford rudimentary addiction treatment despite billions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan & estimates that 60,000 Afghan women regularly consume opiates. Opiate use for recreation & not medicinal purposes is increasing sharply. Massive drug addiction certainly speaks to the euphoria of emancipation felt by women who Hillary Clinton & the US Marines have freed through bombing their homes, mosques, schools, fields, killing & incarcerating their beloved sons, brothers, mates. (Btw, most articles lauding Clinton show photos of fully veiled women to support their propaganda.) (Photo by Ahmad Masood)

Egypt protests against Mubarak hacks running for president

It’s one thing for US oligarchs to make an ass of democracy by reducing elections to buffoonery. It’s another thing entirely for Egyptian oligarchs to pull such a stunt--in the midst of an uprising which has not ceased after a year despite killings, torture, incarcerations, disappearances, trials of thousands of protesters by the regime. Against such a revolution, you don’t pull stunts. So it’s hard to figure out what the hell military rulers in Egypt had in mind when they put disreputable Mubarak hacks in charge of the election commission & advanced a slate of candidates from the Mubarak regime, including Omar Suleiman. Suleiman is the creepy Mubarak official praised by a US diplomat as not squeamish when it came to torture, the CIA’s point man in Egypt for US rendition programs, played a leading role in in the Israeli war on Gaza, played a role in fabricating the case for US invasion of Iraq, engineered rigged elections under Mubarak, & claimed Egypt is not ready for democracy. He couldn’t win an election as dog-catcher without fraud & rigging. He entered the race using fraud since there’s no way in hell he obtained the required 30,000 signatures for candidacy in one day, even if he used the army to obtain them at gunpoint. The junta may have been testing the strength of the mass movement against military rule by putting Suleiman forward. Some think it was to make Amr Moussa, another Mubarak hack & junta candidate, look credible by comparison. Hundreds of thousands of protestors didn’t wait for this stunt to play itself out in the May elections; they showed up Saturday in Tahrir Square to oust the Mubarak officials as candidates. The next day the election commission bounced ten of the 23 presidential candidates & disqualified them as candidates. Suleiman was bounced for impropriety in signature gathering. No kidding!? (Photo by Amr Nabil/AP)

Thugs for Omar

The NY Times identifies these thugs as “staff members for Omar Suleiman” delivering his candidacy papers & 30,000 signatures to the election commission. On Wednesday, the 4th of April, Omar said he wouldn’t run for president. On Friday, the 6th, he reversed that decision after a few hundred (more likely a dozen) minions hoping to escape his torture chambers held a wee protest demanding he run. On Saturday, he claims he gathered the required 30,000 signatures from across Egypt which he turned in on Sunday. This isn’t Suleiman giving credulity a run for it’s money. He’s so used to convincing people through torture & terror he didn’t know he was making an ass of what is possible. The treacherous bum belongs in prison.  (Photo by Khaled Elfiqi/European Pressphoto Agency)

Ten Egyptian candidates barred from elections

Muslim Brotherhood candidate Khairat al-Shater had been expected to do well at the polls
Egyptian election officials have barred 10 candidates from standing in upcoming polls, including former spy chief Omar Suleiman and the Muslim Brotherhood's Khairat al-Shater.

Ultra-orthodox Salafi Hazem Salah Abu Ismail and long-standing opposition leader Ayman Nour were also banned.

The banned candidates have 48 hours to appeal. Thirteen candidates remain.

Correspondents say the move comes as a surprise and looks set to dramatically alter the race.

Read more (BBC News)

New application for comments. Disqus.

As you may have noticed, the new comments application now is Disqus . Let's hope all goes well from now on.

A letter to Lufthansa.

"Dear Lufthansa,
I recently learned that you have chosen to cancel flight tickets to people who were flying to Palestine.
Your action was taken per request of the Israeli government, not the Palestinian government. As you may or may not know, Palestine is under occupation of the Israeli government, occupation which is forbidden by the International law, against the Establishing Treaty of the U.N (Sec.2) and in contravention of E.U regulations. Your action only reinforces this occupation, and puts Israel as the de facto border control for Palestine.
I am sure your action is not political and is purely economically motivated, so that your company would not have to fly the 'unwanted' (by Israel) visitors to Palestine back to their country of origin at your expense. I have no doubt that your would comply with other criminal regimes, should that cooperation bring you financial benefit, and that this is not a case of 'pro-Israelisem'.
Regardless, I see this act of yours as vile and despicable, and act that reinforces the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, and I will not be willing to take any part in it, active or passive. Since your actions are financially motivated, my response is financial as well. Please cancel immediately my Miles & More card, I will have no use of it as I will not fly with your company or subsidiaries again. I will also make sure that my friends, family and colleagues will be made aware of your complicity with the Israeli criminal activities and reconsider their business with your company.
Please note that while written within your 'contact form', the contents of this message will be copied and distributed to social media, discussion groups and printed media as much as I see fit.
When your company rediscovers its moral compass and decides to make good on the wrongs that you have done, please notify me so that I could consider flying with you once more, as I did find your services good and comfortable for my needs."

Egyptian parliament passes bill banning Omar Suleiman from presidential candidacy

Legislation would ban all who served as head of Egyptian intelligence or as senior Mubarak-regime officials from competing in presidential elections.

The Egyptian parliament passed a bill Thursday that forbids any senior officials of the former regime from running for presidential candidacy. The legislation still requires the approval of the ruling military council, before it can be made law.

The bill is intended to thwart the candidacy of all those who served as head of the Egyptian intelligence, including Omar Suleiman, who most recently served as Egyptian vice-president.

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Fresh protests hit Cairo's Tahrir

A large protest is taking place in Egypt's Tarhir Square, where people are marching in support of a new law that bans Mubarak-era officials from running for office.

Shipyard not graveyard!

Hanjin shipyard in Subic Bay, Philippines, was set up in 2006 in the industrial zone established  when the US naval base there closed. Since its construction, the shipyard has become the world’s 4th largest shipbuilding facility making the Philippines a major center for the shipping industry & employing 21,000 workers. Subic Bay Freeport Zone is one of 5,000 trade free zones established around the world since the 1970s with  millions of workers employed in them (43 million in 1999). Countries view these zones as a way to attract direct foreign investment & create industrialization but they are part of neoliberal economic strategy to dismantle trade & tariff barriers & to control labor without rights or restrictions. Labor disputes are endemic since workers are denied basic rights or health & safety protections amounting in many cases to human rights crimes. The Hanjin shipyard in Subic Bay as well as their shipyard facility in Korea are hell holes of labor violations including improper payment of wages, thousands of work-related accidents, deaths from accidents, illegal terminations & suspensions, physical assaults by Korean supervisors (which the company attributes to cultural differences), violations of safety practices, including no weight lifting protections, being forced to weld in blistering heat, denial of protective equipment & uniforms for handling toxic material, denial of toilet breaks, inadequate on-site medical care (leading to deaths & permanent injury), & of course, the refusal to recognize a union that can defend workers.

Hanjin Shipping, a South Korean conglomerate, made its fortune from US military contracts in the Korean & Vietnam wars. Since 2007, their premier facility in Subic Bay  exported 14 vessels, each worth $60 million minimum. They project a profit of $3.4 billion by the end of 2012 on their $1 billion investment. Hanjin views their investment as a license to maximum exploitation of Filipino labor. Hanjin workers have flooded government agencies with complaints, including the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the Filipino parliament, political officials. They have demanded the government uphold labor laws & safety standards at the Hanjin shipyard but the Filipino oligarchs making a killing from Hanjin’s investment ignore their appeals. The government guaranteed Hanjin a fifty-year lease, ten years of tax-free operations, & absolute control over the work force since this suits their needs as well.

Hanjin Workers have received active solidarity from labor, church, & political groups and most movingly from Hanjin shipyard workers in Korea. Representatives from Hanjin Korea toured & spoke to Hanjin workers & supporters about their own struggle against Hanjin & their relentless efforts over years to be treated with respect & fairness. Last year, the first woman welder at Hanjin Korea occupied a crane for several months to protest lay-offs. Hanjin cut electricity & food to her but she persisted & said: “I feel it is my mission, it is what I owe to the future generation of workers & the younger ones so that they will not have to go through the same inhuman treatment & unfair dismissals that we had to go through. I feel really bad that while we are making little headways in improving our working conditions in Korea, the same company is doing its repressive activities here with even greater repression against the Filipino workers by not recognizing the union at all.”

You will find email addresses at the bottom of this blog where you can voice your own protests against Hanjin abuses & lend your support to Hanjin workers: http://hronlineph.com/2011/07/06/urgent-action-philippines-harassment-intimidation-and-arbitrary-arrest-and-detention-of-three-hanjin-workers/

How to hide crimes by language

An Afghan girl practices walking in her new prosthetic legs at the Orthopedic Center run by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul, which provides free prosthetics to 6,000 new Afghan amputees every year. The original Reuters caption to this photo says 1,000 of these amputees are “direct victims of war...wounded by the heightened potency of bombs”. Don’t you just love how they play with the ugly truths of US-NATO occupation!? Did the other 5,000 amputees lose their limbs as indirect victims of war? What are the indirect ways of blowing people’s limbs off? Does “indirect” mean their limbs weren’t bombed off but lost when they stepped on land mines or shot off? Is “indirect” something like “collateral damage”? Is this what the US has in mind when it talks about emancipating Afghan women from Taliban tyranny? Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO troops. And demand compensation to every single one of the victims--direct & indirect--of US-NATO military aggression. (Photo by Omar Sobhani)

Immigration is a human right & should not be punishable by death

News of undocumented immigrants is frequent on the US-Mexican border. Many are arrested as they’re transported in over-packed vehicles by human smugglers called coyotes; many are arrested in “stash houses” (way stations on their trip) sometimes malnourished & dehydrated. All those detained will be processed & deported; many will attempt again to cross the border river. One local TV station has an extremely right-wing attitude toward what it calls “illegal aliens” with special alarmist reports on al-Qaeda crossing here & functioning more to police the border, less like a news agency. They’re reporting now on a van accident where nine undocumented immigrants were killed & six taken to hospital. No details of the accident are forthcoming & the report was so slippery, it was clear they were providing cover for border patrol misconduct. At a roadside memorial to honor the victims I met several people. One woman told me there was scant more coverage on Spanish language TV but they did report the accident was caused by a reckless car chase by the border patrol who pulled in front of the van on the frontage road of an expressway. To avoid collision, the driver veered & hit a pole causing a rollover. According to a witness, bodies flew out of the overcrowded van “like popcorn”. There are no reports on those who died or the conditions of the injured. Who were they, where were they from, how old were they, how many men, women, children? Today the right-wing TV station--acting again as an immigration enforcement agency--continues to ignore the victims & is all about immigration agents & the border patrol hunting down the network of human smugglers to make somebody pay for the crimes of US immigration policy & over-aggressive border patrol. This photo is of the scene of the accident/crime where people have set up a memorial to honor those who died trying to make a better life for themselves & their families. May they RIP. Immigration is a human right & it should not be punishable by death. May we continue to oppose US-Mexico immigration policy & demand that immigration be recognized as a human right.

Why a cultural boycott of Israel is justified

Israeli forces fire tear gas towards Palestinian stonethrowers during a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel. Photograph: Getty Images.

A fortnight ago, dozens of actors, playwrights and directors called on The Globe to cancel a planned performance by Israel’s national theatre company Habima, to avoid complicity with “human rights violations and the illegal colonisation of occupied land”.

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Falluja birth defects: Those Laboratory Mice Were Children

One among an unusually high number of children in Basra fighting leukaemia.

FALLUJAH, Iraq, Apr 13, 2012 (IPS) - At Fallujah hospital they cannot offer any statistics on children born with birth defects – there are just too many. Parents don’t want to talk. "Families bury their newborn babies after they die without telling anyone," says hospital spokesman Nadim al-Hadidi. "It’s all too shameful for them."

"We recorded 672 cases in January but we know there were many more," says Hadidi. He projects pictures on to a wall at his office: children born with no brain, no eyes, or with the intestines out of their body.
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Removing JS-Kit-Echo comment facility, back to Blogger

I'm in the process of removing JS-Kit(Echo) comments application and will be reverting to Blogger's default comments facility hoping that this would finally solve all issues this blog is facing. Hopefully by tomorrow morning Sydney time we will be set for the classic look. Thank you for your patience..

Amira Hass explains why Israel’s U.S. model of ethnic cleansing failed, and why ‘Jewish regime’ will ‘crumble’

"Read this amazing true line: "The question was, and is, how much more bloodshed, suffering and disasters will be needed until the Jewish regime of discrimination and separation, which we have created here over the past 64 years, crumbles." This is a frankly anti-Zionist piece, written by a child of Holocaust survivors. Amira Hass is thirsting for the DeKlerk to lead her society out of its racist dead-end. I cannot imagine it being published in the New York Times. A sad reflection on our discourse. "
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Pretty kitty

This Sphinx cat is letting us know exactly what she thinks of being entered in an international cat beauty contest in Vilnius, Lithuania last Saturday. Though her protest is admirable, what do you say, her odds weren’t that good anyway!? (Photo by Mindaugas Kulbis)

Behold the glory of the British throne!

By Betty Windsor’s own admission in her “anus horribilis” speech, behold the inspiration for the British throne! Through her regrettable confession we now gain insight into all that is banal, repugnant, reactionary in feudalism. He’s not like those glorified feudals you meet in Shakespeare but very much akin to what you find in Bram Stoker or Tales from the Crypt. He’s running on batteries now since decades of hand waving have taken a toll on him. If you take a survey of these guys around the world--from Phil to the kings of Thailand, Saudi Arabia & elsewhere, you will see they all look like death warmed over. Generations of indolence & idiocy do that.

The fearless women of Bahrain's revolution

Bahraini protesters protect their faces from tear gas during a protest in Manama last Saturday to demand the freedom of Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, a prominent activist jailed by the regime last year & now in critical condition from a two-month hunger strike. The regime says it is considering a request by Denmark to gain custody of Al Khawaja, who is also a Danish citizen. This photo highlights at once two features of the revolution against tyranny in Bahrain: the regime’s excessive use of tear gas & the front line role of women in standing up against regime violence. (Photo by Hasan Jamali)

The moochocrats go shopping

The horse races were called off for Easter so Betty took Cammy & KKKKaty shopping. Every little damn thing the moochocrats do is considered newsworthy--not just in the UK press but to sycophants everywhere (most notably the US media). The color-coordinated trio were offered tea & when KKKKaty tried to grab a slice of that cake she’s eye-balling, Cammy intercepted & handed her a basket of dog biscuits instead. The poor girl is so hungry they probably never made it home for the dog. For ingratiating services of this nature (keeping KKKKaty from eating), Betty just gave Cammy the highest female title in the imaginary world of moochocratic rank: she’s now a grand dame of some kind, whatever the hell that means. There are no extra duties with the title. Cammy can just carry on betting on the horses.

The Disgusting Attacks on Gunter Grass

Why No Sympathy for the Palestinians?
by TARIQ ALI

The German writer Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum) had already predicted the response to his poem in SdZ. There is no reason to be surprised, but there is every reason to be disgusted. Within Germany both the elite and a layer of the population by their words and actions appear to have accepted the disgraceful Goldhagen thesis whereby all German were guilty for the crimes of the Third Reich. This thesis has now been developed further: all Germans are guilty for eternity for the crimes of the Third Reich.

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Egypt Suspends Panel Tasked with Writing New Constitution

The decision is seen as a blow to the Muslim Brotherhood
A court in Egypt suspended a panel tasked with writing a new constitution. The panel was the subject of a boycott by liberals, moderate liberals and others who oppose the Muslim Brotherhood. Critics of the panel's makeup claimed that the body was stacked with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and said the system for electing representatives to the panel favored the majority party too much.Read more

American canaries

This group dressed like mongrel canaries are well-heeled spectators at the Masters Golf Tournament held at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. The club steadfastly refuses membership to women & won’t disclose it’s exclusive membership list--known to be the most powerful men in industry & finance, including Bill Gates & Warren Buffett. Now gaining entrance to such a den of iniquity isn’t a priority issue with me; I once reluctantly was part of invading a men’s bar in Manhattan (in 1970) & when I observed the state of the filthy toilets preferred the patrons stay in their own sty. But I have a few questions for the boys in the Augusta Club: “When your man, George Bush, said ‘they hate us for our freedoms’, do you take that as a license to disgrace whatever there is of American culture & dress like buffoons?” And, “Do you actually bar women from membership or do even your own mates refuse to appear with you in public?”  And lastly, “Do you think you’re sexy?”  (Photo by Brian Snyder)

US-NATO out of Afghanistan!

When the US & NATO first occupied Afghanistan in 2001, the US claimed it was all about women’s rights & routing Osama bin Laden from the cave where he was hiding. Tony Blair in the UK claimed it was to wipe out the flourishing heroin trade. Now 11 years later, the Afghan heroin trade has increased from 185 tons per year to a staggering 5,800 tons per year. Officials like to blame the drug trade on the Taliban--but it’s US military planes flying the stuff out to be processed. With millions of Afghans in refugee camps in & outside Afghanistan, that baloney about liberating women is exposed as cynical & idiotic. And now we know, bin Laden was never in a cave in Afghanistan; he was in Pakistan with an entire entourage of aides, wives, nearly a dozen kids, & his dialysis equipment. These justifications for war would be farcical if they weren’t so truly tragic, if the Afghan people weren't paying such a terrible price. This photo of a child miner loading his donkeys with coal at a mine in Samangan, Afghanistan (north of Kabul) gets to the real reasons behind this barbaric invasion. Geological surveys indicate massive deposits of oil, gas, copper, iron, gold, coal, uranium, lithium, emeralds, & rubies all over Afghanistan. These untapped mineral reserves could generate billions/trillions in revenue--but not for the Afghan people. The government has already contracted out mining rights to India & China, where the massive fortunes accrued will be divided between Afghan oligarchs & foreign investors. Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO troops so the people of Afghanistan can start ridding the country of their own predacious oligarchs. (Photo by Qais Usyan/AFP)

Settlers at their favorite trick again; forging ownership papers

Palestinians deny sale of Machpelah house

Palestinian family who lived in contested Hebron property says it never sold it to anyone; settlers forged ownership papers
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Uprooting 30,000 Bedouin in Israel

Neve Gordon
'It is not every day that a government decides to relocate almost half a per cent of its population in a programme of forced urbanisation,' Rawia Aburabia asserted, adding that 'this is precisely what Prawer wants to do.' The meeting, which was attempting to coordinate various actions against the Prawer Plan, had just ended, and Rawia, an outspoken Bedouin leader who works for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was clearly upset. She realised that the possibility of changing the course of events was extremely unlikely and that, at the end of the day, the government would uproot 30,000 Negev Bedouin and put them in townships. This would result in an end to their rural way of life and would ultimately deprive them of their livelihood and land rights.
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Israeli forces attempt to arrest 2-year-old Palestinian child

Murad Shtayeh, the coordinator of the popular resistance committee in Kufr Qaddoum and the father of little Mo’men, told The Electronic Intifada that heavily armed Israeli soldiers raided his house on Monday at 5:30pm. Two soldiers remained outside, two others went in the house, shouting they were going to arrest Mo’men.
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Günter Grass and changing German attitudes towards Israel

The poet hopes his latest work, What Must Be Said, will prompt others to break their silence on Israel's nuclear weapons

'Günter Grass says he had not spoken out previously because his nationality forbade it: any German breaking the silence on the Israel nuclear programme may be accused of antisemitism.' Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe

The anti-war poem published by Günter Grass is a subtle but straightforward example of a tendency in Germany that the historian Dan Diner has called "exonerating projection": the relativisation of the Holocaust through the implicit equation of Israel with Nazi Germany. In the poem, What Must Be Said, the 84 year-old Nobel prize-winner who was a member of the Waffen SS as a teenager imagines himself as a "survivor" of an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran.

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Günter Grass's Israel poem provokes outrage

Germany's most celebrated writer's lyrical warning of a looming Israeli aggression against Iran triggers international row

Günter Grass’s poem What Must Be Said was first published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

During his long literary career, Günter Grass has been many things. Author, playwright, sculptor and, unquestionably, Germany's most famous living writer. There is the 1999 Nobel prize and Grass's broader postwar role as the country's moral conscience – albeit a claim badly undermined in 2006 when it emerged that the teenage Grass had served in the Waffen SS. But at the ripe old age of 84, Grass has triggered a furious row with a poem criticising Israel.

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The ghosts of injustice don't go away until justice is served

Regimes around the world disappear, torture, murder thousands of political dissidents--some young, some old, many men, many women--with the criminal & politically stupid intention of silencing their voices & their criticisms of regime abuses & crimes. One can’t name a single country where that’s working out. In dozens of countries where people have lost their beloved & their companeros, the faces of the dead are brought back in photographic montages to haunt regimes & to demand justice & retribution. Here thousands of family members & protestors in Ankara Turkey gather outside a court hearing the cases of two butchers from the 1980 military coup. Both criminals are hospitalized (most likely faking it to avoid justice) & did not attend the proceedings (probably rigged in their favor to begin with). Justice is in short supply around the world for those who stand up against violence but for those who believe in justice, these martyrs remain a clarion call to resistance against violence. (Photo by Burhan Ozbilici)

Immigration is a human right

Immigrants intercepted aboard a makeshift boat on their way to Spain from Africa. (Photo by Santiago Ferrero)

     A new specter is haunting not just Europe but the entire planet Earth: the mass movement and migration of millions of people on a scale unprecedented in human history as a result of war, political conflict, and economic predation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental monitoring agency, estimated in 1992 that 100 million people were on the move; today their estimate is 200 million people moving under perilous conditions on well-traveled routes from the southern Americas to north Americas, from eastern Europe to western Europe, from Africa to Europe and the Middle East, from Asia to Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Many do not survive the dangerous trips, many are subject to violent crimes and disabling injuries along the way. Many are unaccompanied women and minors. All are escaping intolerable conditions and risking everything to find a better life for themselves and their families.
     On every route taken by undocumented migrants, human rights catastrophes are the norm. Governments in destination countries know full well what migrants are subjected to in order to gain entry to a country and they turn a blind eye to the often criminal misconduct migrants endure. In just a cursory review of some of the routes, there is substantial forced trafficking for debt bondage, slavery, and of women and children for purposes of sexual exploitation and violence. Where in previous migrations, men dominated, today there is a huge feminization of immigration, along with millions of unaccompanied minors. The migration of orphaned and abandoned children is perhaps most noteworthy between Mexico and the US and between Zimbabwe and South Africa. (Children from Mexico are often attempting to reunite with parents who already migrated.) These are particularly vulnerable groups to depredation and crime. Hundreds (some estimate as high as 1,000) of unidentified migrants die every year on the US-Mexico border from heat stroke, dehydration, hyperthermia, drowning. Hundreds are injured and dismembered  jumping on and off moving trains en route to the US border. Thousands die from traveling on overcrowded, rickety boats from Africa to southern Europe and from the Middle East to Australia. Thousands of Ethiopian and Somali migrants attempting to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen suffer from diarrheal diseases, malaria, respiratory infections, snake bites, and exposure from sleeping in the open. Migrants everywhere are extorted for money, murdered, disappeared, raped, maltreated. Illegal trafficking of migrants–distinct from coerced trafficking for slavery or prostitution–is an operation with estimated earnings up to $11 billion per year. Many perform a service; many are predators.
     Todays mass migrations include millions of workers moving across country, between countries, and between continents to find work. There is scarcely a country unaffected by this massive movement of people in what is called a “transnational revolution” and what is not just an episodic phenomenon but will be a determinant factor in international politics for a long time. This global migration is a result of the economic, social, and political transformations of the post-Cold War period, particularly the globalization of capital and commodities, and to constant military ventures. Deteriorating economic conditions and effects of IMF structural adjustment programs have rendered many countries incapable of sustaining their populations and compel people to migrate.
     The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made all 15 of its republics sovereign states and eliminated the social securities which, while inadequate, kept millions of people economically afloat. The ensuing economic and political chaos of that disintegration and  restoration of capitalism led to massive unemployment and a massive head-long rush of millions to western Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall over one million East Germans moved west in the first year alone.
     For purposes of immigration control, governments of destination countries make distinctions between economic immigrants seeking employment and political immigrants seeking asylum from persecution, civil conflict, and war. That distinction served a political purpose during the Cold War as a way to discredit communism by accepting its refugees. Now asylum seekers are fleeing from capitalist dictatorships and conflicts so new restrictions are placed on definitions of political refugees. Nevertheless, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants estimates the world total of asylum seekers as 62 million, with 32 million displaced by war and living in refugee camps set up throughout the world.
     Persons seeking asylum from war, coups, revolutions, repression, include especially those displaced by US military ventures in Southeast Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia. The US Gulf War against Iraq displaced millions of Iraqi citizens along with forcing the mass departure of an estimated 5 million foreign workers (from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). The US war against Afghanistan has displaced over 5 million refugees to Pakistan and Iran and has also internally displaced millions of Pakistanis fleeing US drone attacks. There are nearly 2 million Somalis displaced or seeking asylum from US bombing and war and 4 million experiencing famine. Asylum seekers in the 1970s included refugees from the US-backed coup in Chile, from apartheid in South Africa, political upheavals in several other countries. Colonization of Palestine by Zionist settlers from around the world not only dispersed millions of Palestinians to Syria, Jordan, Africa and other Gulf states but there are still 5 million living in refugee camps. The list of mass dislocations goes on and on.
     The migration within countries is often to find work in mining, agriculture, construction, or domestic service in other regions but the primary dislocation is from rural to urban slums. This is caused by the ruthless expropriation of small farm holders by agribusiness in league with the IMF and World Bank under the banner and defrauding of the “green revolution” in agriculture. This  change in agriculture is integral to neoliberalism and involves giant international food conglomerates like Monsanto, chemical companies like Dow, government agencies like USAID, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the structural adjustment programs of the IMF, and financing by the World Bank. The narrative used to promote this usurpation of land tenure is to increase world food production to overcome mass starvation. In fact, it is a program intended to undercut radical political proposals for agrarian reform that would serve farmers and not the oligarchs. Mexico, India, Latin America, and now Africa are the laboratories where this devolution in agriculture is being  carried out. The green revolution involves the production of cash crops for the global market, leaving countries unable to produce food for themselves and making them dependent on the global market; it involves herbicides, pesticides, chemical farming, and genetically modified crops which have caused land degradation, pollution, loss of biodiversity and depleted food quality; and it requires genetically restricted technologies making farmers dependent on outside companies for new seeds. The green revolution does not leave redistribution of land ownership and tenancy up for grabs but privileges international agribusiness so that food systems are firmly in their control. The food shortage has not thereby been solved but exacerbated. In a world where the majority of people depend on farming for their livelihood, that has meant dispossession and migration.
     Another result of this neoliberal process has been deforestation, hydroelectric projects, oil drilling, mining, massive water diversion schemes requiring the forced removal of people from traditional lands farmed by them for countless generations, the dispossession of millions of farmers and farm labor and their forced migration to urban poverty. There is no more cogent critic of this process in India than Vandana Shiva and no country which more glaringly exposes the neoliberal schemes and crimes against farmers than India, where about 17,000 small dispossessed farmers commit suicide every year. The indigenous peoples being forcibly removed from their lands to make room for agribusiness have not gone quietly but their resistance has been violently crushed militarily in every country.
     In the 20th century, US and European employers deliberately recruited foreign workers to work in agriculture, construction, domestic service. Temporary work migration programs were established to ensure and monitor migration. To the employer, this served a dual purpose: to acquire cheap labor and to undercut the organization and strength of domestic labor. Immigrants also served as convenient scapegoats in periods of economic downturn. Foreign immigrants became an irreplaceable component of the labor force. Regulation of immigration was first initiated during WWI and strengthened during the 1920s and 1930s but was relaxed after WWII with European and US guest workers programs. The organized labor movement has never practiced the concept of fellowship with immigrant workers. It has historically held to a racist and xenophobic program of seeing immigrant workers as competitors, refusing to organize them into unions or defend them against attacks. As a result, employers continue to use immigrant labor to weaken domestic labor. Unorganized immigrant workers are indeed competitors; there’s no getting around that. But while their representatives have often made initiatives to union officials to bridge this chasm and work together, outside of some recent ceremonial rhetoric by US union leaders, no initiatives have been pursued to organize immigrant workers and make labor a solid phalanx of unity and solidarity. And that is true in Europe as well as the US. Until that is done, immigrant labor will remain a lever to weaken the trade union movement and eventually to destroy it. There’s no way around that either.
     On the jobs, migrants have no rights that are respected. In Ontario, Canada, eleven Peruvian migrant workers were killed in an auto accident when the van carrying them between farm jobs was broadsided by a truck. In Canada, there have been several car crashes in the past decade involving deaths and serious injuries for migrant workers. A guest workers program brings 30,000 seasonal migrant workers to Canada mainly for agriculture; there are undoubtedly thousands more working without visas. All are most certainly their families’ main income earners. Like the US, Canada and the agriculture industry are quick to dispose of migrant workers who get injured on the job. Most often, they’re deported to their own countries without compensation, unable to pay for medical care, and unable to work. According to a Canadian farm workers rights group, migrants who get injured in the course of employment are entitled to the same rights & benefits as citizens but the accident was not declared a workplace accident. The men who survived the crash will likely lose worker’s compensation benefits and will certainly be deported. Recently, a 21-year old undocumented worker from Mexico, paralyzed in a construction job accident in Chicago, Illinois, was deported to Mexico where he died in a hospital unable to provide the necessary care and away from his family. In the US, child labor is illegal except for agricultural work where an estimated 800,000 immigrant children work with no protective laws. It is also common for employers to withhold wages from undocumented workers, knowing there is little legal recourse that could not lead to deportation.
     The unwillingness of trade unions to defend and organize immigrant workers has meant the unchecked growth of right-wing nationalist opposition to them. These white supremacist and often neo-Nazi formations mobilize and in some places engage in violent attacks on refugees. Under the influence of the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, immigrant rights became seen as a human rights issue. Whereas the Civil rights Movement weakened the hold of supremacist ideas, political inaction has made cultural differences–allegedly irreconcilable–dominate recent discourse. Allowing white supremacists to go unchecked has meant the creation of a fictitious nationalist ideal of cultural unity and homogeneity and the dominance of racism and xenophobia. From Arizona to Amsterdam, xenophobes fret about being overcome by immigrants and fixate on birth rates among immigrant women. In every election campaign, in every country of the past decades, immigration is a pivotal issue with politicians trying to outdo each other in animosity and viciousness, like proposing electrified walls and moats of alligators to keep immigrants out.
     Governments of course face a conundrum with their immigration policy. Immigrant labor is more vital than ever in the campaign to destroy organized labor at the same time as the economic crisis has increased their value as scapegoats and a way to undermine the Bill of Rights. A concern to the oligarchs is the rising militancy among immigrants in several countries, including France, England, the US where the second generation of immigrants protest discrimination, heavy-handed policing, racism, and unemployment. Thus there are new quotas, new restrictions, tighter border controls, new walls going up around the world, greater policing of employers, more work place raids by immigration officials, more detentions, and more deportations and this is true in every destination country. And of course, after 9/11, governments added a national security scare to justify greater surveillance and militarization of the borders.
     One of the ways in which immigrant labor is demeaned is by categorizing them as unskilled rural people. Ignoring that they’re more skilled than the average US politician, this category is a US Department of Labor classification of little descriptive value except to demean. Many migrate with considerable skills. Many have more or as much knowledge and training as the average US male who can apply for well-paid factory or trade jobs. The fact that they find work in agriculture fields does not mean that’s all they are capable of doing; that is where they are permitted to work. They are also not moving from “developing countries” to industrial countries. Many of their home countries have industrial plants doing the outsourced work US workers used to do for much more money. More importantly, the so-called industrial countries have no intention of allowing the “developing countries” to develop. They are a source of cheap labor and natural resources and that’s how they intend to keep them.
     To capitalists, globalization goes one way–to serve their profits and their need for cheap labor; globalization means free flowing, cross border exploitation and they respect no  impediments to their profiteering like national sovereignty. But when it comes to immigrants and their labor and human rights, they hold firm to national sovereignty and the sanctity of borders and the nation-state. Such nationalist fervor is not in the interest of working people. For us, globalization means only one thing: solidarity with other working people wherever they are from. This is not sentimental malarkey propagated by bleeding hearts but an essential program for freedom from the shackles of exploitation for everyone. Our solidarity and our wisdom begin with demanding the borders be opened, with opposition to US plunder abroad, and with campaigning within our unions and churches and political groups for the rights of undocumented immigrants.

Here we go again with the crazy saviors

The Kony 2012 deception was thrown for a loop when their main man, Jason Russell, went bananas in San Diego; he got naked, vandalized cars, & masturbated for all to see. They say it was a reactive psychosis. Reactive indeed! Lying your ass off to promote US military intervention in Uganda & fantasizing yourself as the white savior of Africa certainly can do that to a questionable sanity. But the shame of all this apparently hasn’t brought the Kony 2012 war mongers to their senses. Now they plan on running a sequel to this cynical political fraud. Nothing will stop them in their campaign to bring hell down on the people of Uganda--not even hundreds of protesting Ugandan bloggers putting the lie to all this. In this photo, Ugandans are watching the mockumentary & learning for the first time from the deranged Russell about the peril that ravaged their own town!? This report from MSNBC clearly shows the collusion of US media in this despicable war mongering. (Photo by James Akena)
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/03/11007386-kony-2012-sequel-postponed

Cops gone wild

During the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, police in the US began again to use tear gas & violence on protestors. Extreme violence was used against civil rights protestors & in the early days of the antiwar movement but had ceased during most of the anti-Vietnam War movement & at most protests up to the WTO in 1999. As we saw during the Occupy protests, police now use violence without restraint. And that has been true of cops around the world--whether against the Arab uprisings or against striking workers. Every protest is treated as a riot & police come in force, arrayed in battle gear. Here two women treat a child who was among 30 students pepper sprayed (April 3rd) by a cop at Santa Monica College in California. Students were protesting higher course fees at an open SMC trustee board meeting. There was an overflow crowd which cops say “tried to storm” the meeting. One student claims a cop fired pepper spray into the faces of people standing arm’s length away. Standing, not storming! The child was in that crowd. Activists around the world need to gather in massive numbers to defend our rights to assembly & free speech & to demand the cops stop the use of tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets, water hoses, & other assault weapons. The right to protest is a fundamental human right now under siege & the only way to defend it is to massively "storm" those who would deny it. (Photo by Michael Yanow / Getty Images)

A devil's victory

Romney romps to a primary victory in the US state of Wisconsin. In a thunderous rebuttal of the half-wit, Santorum, 25 voters in the cheese state voted for Romney. Exit polls showed most Romney supporters thought they were showing up for a barn dance & when it turned out to be an election, they just pulled whatever lever would end it all the quickest. There’s nothing to be alarmed about here. My Wisconsin grandmother swore the devil once showed up at a barn dance in Eau Claire. They didn’t know it was Satan until after he left & they recalled his hoofs & foul smell. In the case of Romney & Santorum, the foul smell preceded them. So most voters stayed indoors & stores report a record sales of air deodorizers.

He's not heavy; he's just my brother

What a remarkable photo of a young girl & her baby brother. Neither is playing to the camera. When one cares for younger siblings from an early age, the easy “maternal” confidence (as this young girl clearly feels) often confounds others. This young girl would be bemused by such attitudes. He’s just her baby brother. (Photo by Evi Lemberger in Fulbaria, Bangladesh)

Isn't she lovely!?

Evi Lemberger, the photojournalist who took this photo in Fulbaria, Bangladesh, said she accompanied an NGO photographer who was posing children to promote the NGO agenda & was surrounded by kids who just wanted their pictures taken. She gave them no directions on how to act in front of the camera. Here is one child's straightforward presentation of who she is. Isn’t she lovely!?

The future of fashion

Fall/Winter fashion collection on the Seoul, Korea runway. The oligarchs don’t know where capitalism is going but it’s clear fashion is getting there first. They don't identify if it's the men's or women's line and does it really matter? (Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA)

US-backed brutality in Bahrain

In Bilad al-Qadeem, Bahrain, (a suburb of the capital, Manama) a riot cop fires tear gas at protesters rallying to support jailed activists. The US-backed security forces in Bahrain have distinguished themselves by excessive & indiscriminate use of tear gas in residential areas, fired directly into homes, shot directly at people’s heads. Many have died from tear gas inhalation, including a 5-day old infant. Stun grenades & rubber bullets are also used against protestors causing many serious injuries which are treated at homes by volunteers because seeking treatment in public or private hospitals leads to interrogation, arrest, disappearance. Dozens of medical personnel have also been prosecuted or disappeared for treating injured protestors. The US & European media continue to report protests as conflict between Shiite Muslims & the Sunni monarchy--like it was a religious war and not a popular revolution against tyranny.  (Photo by Hamad I Mohammed/Reuter).

The odious compared to the comic

Laurel & Hardy would turn over in their graves at the invidious comparison.

A call to arms to defend the Bill of Rights

The US Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. But that supreme thing best describes how supremely stupid & dangerous they are. Today they ruled we can be strip searched for even minor offenses like not having a dog on a leash or not wearing a seat belt--just in case we’re stashing drugs or guns in our underwear.  Employers can now invade our privacy by checking our finances & demanding our FB passwords; police agents are prowling through our status updates for signs of insurgency & al-Qaeda connections; police use tear gas, truncheons, & rubber bullets on legal protestors without the fear of repercussions; & Obama is turning the Bill of Rights into confetti. Things are damn alarming & these actions are a call to arms for all who believe in democracy & civil liberties. It’s time to hit the pavement in the largest numbers possible-- especially since people like me don’t want to spend our senior years in the penitentiary. (Caricature by Dana Verkouteren)

Boycott all Israeli products to oppose Zionist apartheid

This is what Zionist apartheid looks like. As a result of electricity blackouts imposed on Gaza by Israel, people are forced to live in the dark several hours a day. It’s not only a matter of being unable to use computers & TV but of safety. Today, it was reported three children in Gaza burned to death when they fell asleep while using candles. A fourth child, who is an infant, is in hospital. The blackouts interfere with medical support systems (like kidney dialysis machines), with surgeries & medical care. Hospitals have to use generators to maintain medical equipment & the hospital’s emergency backup systems are in need of repair because the Israeli blockade makes it difficult to get spare parts for repair. Here a Palestinian infant receives treatment in what serves as the intensive care unit of a Gaza City hospital. Support democracy & justice in Gaza by boycotting all Israeli products. Beware especially of cosmetics & the kiosks at the mall. (Photo by Moohammed Abed/AFP)

Nothing newsworthy here

You’d think it might be newsworthy there’s  been raining & flooding & mud slides along the coast of Ecuador since January, with meteorologists predicting rains through May. Here a woman tends to chickens caught in a perilous situation. It’s true it hasn’t been the worst flooding in the world--with only waist deep water, 30 people killed, about 5,000 people evacuated with most in disaster shelters, 200 homes destroyed, & crops wiped out--but it’s still more consequential than fashions & snubs at the country music awards, the pilot who flipped out midair, & speculations on the $650 million lottery winners. What makes it most noteworthy is that catastrophic flooding has gone on in other Latin American countries & all over southern & Southeast Asia, devastating entire regions (like in Pakistan) and there’s hardly a peep in the US media. Perhaps the oligarchs fear if we hear what’s going on climate-wise, we might start putting two & two together & asking nosy questions, like does this have anything to do with global warming? From such queries can come rebellion against a class of people unfit to manage the planet for the welfare of all. So ignorance again serves power. (Photo by Rodrigo Buendia/AP)

Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Defector tells how US officials 'sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."
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Israeli theater must be removed from London festival, top U.K. cultural figures say

In open letter published in the Guardian, leading directors cite what they say is Habima's 'shameful record of involvement with illegal Israeli settlements.'
In an open letter published over the weekend, dozens of prominent members of the U.K.'s theater and film industries protested the inclusion of Israel's national theater, Habima, in an upcoming Shakespeare festival, over what the signatories say was the theater's "shameful record of involvement with illegal Israeli settlements."

The letter, which was published late last week in the British newspaper the Guardian, was signed by such leading cultural figures as film director Mike Leigh, actress Emma Thompson and actor-director Richard Wilson.
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Netanyahu, like all other Israeli leaders must have read Goering

Haaretz editorial: UN probe must take West Bank out of Israeli hands

No UN investigative committee is needed to understand that the West Bank belongs to another people and its lands are not available to a Jewish and democratic state.
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