Disgusting ad in the New York Times portraying boycott of Israel as a starting point to a holocaust!

Israeli police to activist reciting names of destroyed Palestinian villages: If you keep reading you will be arrested

An Israeli activist being arrested at an event to commemorate the Nakba on
Israeli Independence Day. His weapon? A history book. (Photo: Activestills)

(For video and more pictures of this event see this post)

Mondoweiss
The first text message I received around 22:30 read "The cops have surrounded the building, It's quite likely that everybody will be arrested once we try to get out of the door. Alert everybody." The message was sent by a friend of mine, who along with 14 other activists came to the offices of Zochrot (remembering), an Israeli NGO that focuses on commemorating and raising awareness to the Palestinian Nakba, on the eve of the Israeli independence day. They were planning to go out to the street and remind the celebrators the horrible price that was paid and is still being paid by Palestinians for this so called independence.
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Is that you, Bill?

We haven’t seen Bill Clinton out & about for awhile & now we know why: like all war criminals, he’s morphing into something unsightly & apparently at an accelerated pace. Although to be honest, we don’t know for sure which Clinton this is. Here he (or maybe she) is spotted furtively entering a McDonald’s for a double whopper, hoping Chelsea doesn’t see him go off his vegan diet. It’s that ugly snout that gives him away.

Don't mess with India's dairy farmers

Dairy farmers from across northern India protested in New Delhi yesterday against unfair pricing & profiteering by private dairy companies. The companies--who procure raw milk from farmers, process, package, & deliver it to vendors--are now attempting to reduce prices paid to farmers without also reducing consumer prices. This shakedown is a bonanza for the companies but economically devastating to the dairy farmers. Farmers assembled outside the parliament in New Delhi to demand redress from the central government who they say has turned a deaf ear to the profiteering. They are also protesting the government’s deployment of riot cops against the protest by attempting to prevent farmers from attending the rally & the arrest of 6,000 protestors. Here the protestors douse their leaders with milk & we don’t second-guess their judgement but hope they saved some buckets for the politicians & cops. (Photo by Manish Swarup/AP)

Trumped in effigy

Now here’s a story just chock full of belly laughs because it involves one of the biggest buffoons on the planet: Mr. Donald Trump. Followed by his entourage of sycophants, our man stormed into the Scottish Parliament yesterday to testify to the committee on renewable energy against a wind farm of 11 turbines to be built offshore near a £750m golf resort Trump is having built in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Now we all know full well why he wouldn’t want wind anywhere near that coif of his but the main objections he voiced were aesthetic & xenophobic: wind turbines he pouted, are “horrendous”, “monsters”, & made in China. He responded to questions in the bullying & omniscient style for which he is regrettably known since he certainly isn’t known for his intelligence, wit, or insight. (We understand he watches Charlton Heston reruns to channel Moses but only comes off like a schoolyard bully.) It's difficult to make politicians look intelligent but in contrast to our man the Scottish ministers disported themselves splendidly & must have had a barrel of laughs doing it. When asked what evidence he had to prove his assertion that wind farms destroyed tourism, he responded, “I am the evidence”, & when told that most Scots polled favored wind farms, he answered no one knows more about polls than him, that he knows more about the effects of turbines than any expert, & that he's also an expert on tourism with “many, many awards” to his name (probably from tourist boards & chambers of commerce hoping to snare his bucks). Trump claims he had a sweetheart deal with a Scottish politician who he’s now had a falling out with--testifying at once to the corruption & good sense of that politician. He ended his vituperations threatening to pull out of the deal & move his operation to Ireland if the Scottish Parliament doesn’t get cowed by his wrath. (Ireland, you better hope our man gets his way or you’ll have to contend with all this too.) Two groups of protestors greeted Trump outside the Parliament: the first was assembled entrepreneurs hoping for concessions at the golf resort. The other were environmentalists holding up this effigy & a sign saying, “Scotland wants wind-power, NOT an old wind bag.” (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell)

Take a moment to sign this petition demanding justice for the people of Bhopal

This young mother is a victim of the 1984 Union Carbide explosion of toxic gases in Bhopal, India caused by equipment & safety maintenance neglect. Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical) has refused to contain chemical efflux from that explosion for now 26 years which has poisoned the underground water reservoirs. Over 30,000 people still live nearby due to extreme poverty & are forced to drink the contaminated water. This 3 year-old child was born healthy to a gas-affected mother but developed physical & neurological problems in early childhood connected to the contaminated water & probably to her mother’s toxicity. Dow Chemical which now owns Union Carbide has not offered even a small compensation to the second generation of victims of this continuing tragedy. Bhopal victims have been campaigning to get the craven International Olympic Committee & the English government sponsoring the 2012 Olympic games to reject Dow Chemical as a sponsor of the Dowlympics but they have steadfastly refused, choosing to side with venality & criminality. You can participate in this campaign by signing this petition urging the London Olympics to dump Dow as a sponsor:

http://sumofus.org/campaigns/london-olympics/?sub=fb

 (Photo by Alex Masi)  {This repost from last month is to urge people to sign the petition}

A "middle class" bedroom

Overheard an analysis of class society today which puts an unusual spin on things: “The rich use their money to make more money, the middle class work to save money, & the poor use their money to buy entertainment.” The speaker is apparently so busy stashing money he didn’t notice when his brains fell out & he began talking like Newt Gingrich. (Photo is presumably a middle class bedroom)

Beauty & bucks

So the 2012 list of the world’s most beautiful women is out & once again I’m not on it. Despite my considerable (if not also quirky) vanities, I have to say I’m enormously relieved I can continue to go to market without mascara. They haven’t yet disclosed all the names listed but be assured they’re all filthy rich, get regular facials & manicures, & don’t have to worry when the utility bill goes up. You’ll notice there won't be any war criminals like Clinton on the list since as one gets more implicated in such crimes, ugly goes all the way to the bone. Don't think me a sore loser for don't you agree human beauty is much richer & deeper than People magazine can even conceive? And anyway, who the hell made them the arbiters!?

Where rebels are born & bred

An infant sleeps in a hammock in the makeshift tent of her family displaced by the 2010 Pakistan floods. In the midst of all the squalor of a tent city lacking the basic amenities of sanitation for toilet, shower, & laundry, human life & love go on. According to the Pakistani government, 20 million people were directly affected by the flooding through loss of property, livelihood, crops, & livestock. Such catastrophes bring out the international sharks & grifters who through various agencies & NGOS go after the millions pledged in aid (though much that is pledged is undelivered). Where is the accounting for that money & why is housing not a first priority? Life may go on in such squalor but so also is rebellion generated.  (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen)

Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winner: ‘Israeli government policies are a form of national suicide’

New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman believes that the policies of the current “narrow minded” Israeli government “are basically a gradual long-run form of national suicide.”

Writing in his New York Times blog “Conscience of a Liberal” about Peter Beinart’s controversial book “The Crisis of Zionism”, Krugman writes, “Like many liberal American Jews I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide – and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world.”
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Two years homeless & counting

A young mother plays with her child at the makeshift tent city built near Islamabad by those displaced in the 2010 Pakistan floods. Given the international scandal of massive homelessness & the lack of affordable housing in almost every country, what are the odds this baby will come of age in this hell hole? Human needs should be a given, not a luxury.  (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

A boy's life

These young boys in Pakistan earn a living by collecting recyclables from waste dumps & selling them to a recycling factory. Here they shower in water from a broken water pipe after their work is done. Despite the charm of their evident camaraderie, it cannot be an easy life since these boys are likely homeless & orphaned. Children are the ubiquitous victims of war & economic predation & the most damning testimony against it. (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

Today as yesterday; a nation built on theft

Left: 1948: A photograph from the Palestinian village of Saris , 15km West of Jerusalem, shortly after it was cleansed of its inhabitants. Here, members of the Haganah sit and pose for a photo on furniture taken from an Arab home before the houses were razed to the ground. Hundreds were uprooted from the village. The Arabic name Saris was changed to Shoresh, which is the Hebrew word for "root", ironically...

2012: Israeli MKs relax on sofa of evicted Palestinian family in Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem.

Knesset members celebrate latest E. Jerusalem settlement by posing on evicted Palestinian family’s sofa

Knesset members Michael Ben-Ari (left) and Aryeh Eldad on the evicted Natcheh family's sofa in Beit Hanina. (Photo: Michael Ben-Ari)

Following last week's eviction of the Palestinian Natcheh family from their Beit Hanina home, Israeli Knesset members Michael Ben-Ari and Aryeh Eldad visited the house now inhabited by some eight settlers. To mark the occasion they posted a picture of themselves lounging on the Natcheh's sofa on Facebook.

Meanwhile, the evicted family:

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Watch what you eat or it may eat your brain

The US Department of Agriculture has just confirmed a case of mad cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in a dairy cow in California--the fourth cow they admit to in the past 20 years. Britain was hit hard by mad cow disease in the 1980s & their investigations concluded it was caused by industrial cattle-farming methods where herbivorous, grass eating cattle are fed internal organs & entrails from butchered animals (offal), including from cadavers of sick & injured animals. This recently came up in India where industrial farming of poultry necessitated killing off thousands of contaminated chickens. But of course, industrial farming of chickens around the world employs this method: exhausted layer hens contaminated with antibiotics, ill-treated, sickly, emitting stress hormones, & pooping all over each other, are carted off in trucks & ground up (feathers & all) to be added to feed for the new layer hens. That’s where salmonella comes from & why eggs are dangerous to feed children unless they’re hard-boiled. The USDA needs to come clean on this issue not only in regard to chickens but to cattle. If four cows have been found with mad cow disease, it means they are being fed offal & no one could be so stupid as to believe only four cows were fed the stuff. It just means only four have been sick enough to cause alarm. When you add mad cow disease to pink slime to salmonella in the food supply & realize that all this affects human health (especially that of children) you can see that meeting the primary needs of human life have become central political demands.

The modern David vs. Goliath

A Palestinian boy, in a modern version of David & Goliath, defying an Israeli army bulldozer with rocks during a protest in the West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum where weekly protests are held against Israeli occupation & are always met with tear gas & Israeli violence. In a protest here last month marking the anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie (an American protester run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003) Israeli soldiers unleashed a dog to attack a Palestinian protestor & when they finally pried the dog off the young man, they arrested him. They also fired a rubber bullet at an Israeli woman protesting with Palestinians which hit her in the head & required hospital. Stand with Palestinians by boycotting all Israeli products (which can be identified by the barcode beginning 729). (Photo by Nasser Ishtayeh/AP)

Strength in unity as Afghan women see it

“Strength in Unity” as Afghan women see it: armed to the teeth with AK-47s & the US-NATO on the run. (Photo by Pahktun)

"Strength in Unity" as US-NATO see it

“Strength in Unity” among Afghan women as the US-NATO & Afghan oligarchs see it: bored, apparently compliant, wondering when the hell this conference will end.

(Photo by Musadeq Sadeq/AP)

Another day, another dozen lies about Afghanistan

US-NATO propagandist-liars portray the Afghanistan war as a military crusade led by Clinton to emancipate women through bombing. This photo, worth a thousand lies, belies that despicable deceit by exposing not the barbarous but the grinding humiliations of racist occupation. The entirely male leadership of US-NATO forces (ISAF) corralled Afghan women (undoubtedly many relatives of colluding Afghan officials) to a “Strength in Unity” conference in Kabul yesterday. There are no media reports on the content of this gathering because that would open it up to ridicule. Female US soldiers guarding the perimeters of the conference with rifles feign respect for the hijab by mocking it & manage to degrade democracy at the same time. Did the Afghan women being lectured by men about women’s rights & the problems with their culture get a rifle in their face if they got up to pee or raised a hand to ask a question or tell the conference to stuff it, or get up to leave? Or did they just snooze through the whole damn thing? If the US soldiers could have understood a word of the lecture, they would wonder why Afghan culture is being raked for the very problems they face in the US military. We don’t have to just cringe in solidarity with the Afghan women; we can join with others in demanding the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO troops from Afghanistan. (Photo by Musadeq Sadeq/AP)

Revolution is for rebels & sometimes they're old

There’s a tiresome adage that says ‘revolution is for the young’. The hell with that stuff! In protests around the world, we’ve seen thousands of seniors take on tyranny & attacks on working people with ferocity & determination. The backbone of the antiwar movement here is veteran activists, some of whom have been doing this for nearly 50 years. This man in Tahrir Square is no spring chicken but that only means he’s had more decades to witness & develop a loathing for tyranny. His chants & the chains on this third day of protest in Tahrir Square signify that “Egypt is still in US & military chains”. And he doesn't appear to be flagging in that commitment. (Photo by Fredrik Persson/AP)

Egypt cancels Israeli gas contract

Termination of 20-year deal, which provided 40% of Israel's natural gas, seen as sign of fraying relations between allies

Egyptians call on the government to stop exporting gas to Israel in a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo last year. Photograph: Mohamed Abd el-Ghany/Reuters

Egypt has cancelled a 20-year contract to supply Israel with natural gas in a move interpreted as a sign of increasingly fragile relations between the allies.

Both Egyptian and Israeli officials said the reason for the termination of the deal, which was signed in 2005 and provided 40% of Israel's natural gas, was a dispute over payments between private companies. But the governments were trying to prevent it escalating into a political crisis.

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What's going on around here?

This photo deserves a caption contest. The photographer says it’s a man dressed as a Roman gladiator during celebrations for the birth of Rome. But they weren’t around in the days of Romulus & Remus. And since when did gladiators wear steel-toed leather boots or look for glory in a port-o-potty! Something else is going on here. You can tell the guys looking on think something’s fishy too. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/AP)

Their mamas taught them well

While their mothers use cement blocks, these young men burn tires for barriers against riot police in Budaiya, west of Manama, Bahrain yesterday. Their mamas have taught them well. Some would say the mothers are corrupting the morals of their youth. Wise observers know they are teaching their children & the world what is required in the fierce & fearless fight for democracy & to end tyranny. (Photo by Hamad I. Mohammed)

Monsieur Psychozy at the polls

Monsieur Psychozy leaving the polling booth after voting for himself in the French presidential elections. He has that same repugnant grimace as Mitt Rummey which serves them both in place of a smile & evokes a homicidal impulse in the kindest of souls. Le Monde reports there are pious nuns in one French monastery who have to be medicated to resist the impulse to pummel him to death. Mon dieu, but let 'em at him! (Photo by Eric Feferberg/AP)

Buttering up the judges

A Cornish Rex cat sucking up to one of the judges during an international feline beauty contest in Bucharest, Romania. You can say she hisses & spits on normative standards but this cat doesn’t stand a chance without buttering up some of these referees.  (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP)

’60 Minutes’ profiles Palestinian Christians, Michael Oren (Israeli ambassador) falls on his face

But perhaps the most revealing part of the show was Bob Simon sharing that Oren had complained to CBS News head Jeff Fager before the segment had even been aired, calling it "a hatchet job."
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Homelessness & poverty are now felonies

Now here’s a story that will take your breath away. And when you’ve recovered your breath, your blood will boil. A homeless mother in Norwalk, Connecticut was convicted & sentenced to jail for 5 years for felony larceny. Norwalk police said she stole $15,686 worth of educational services from the city by the unspeakable crime of registering her 6 year old son in a Norwalk school district rather than in Bridgeport, Connecticut because she wanted to send him to a better school. When you read stories like this & remember millionaires steal millions of dollars from public coffers by tax breaks & evasions, you get a better sense of what motivates Al-Qaeda. Here we see this hardened felon suited up for court but we will know that justice is not served until the Norwalk cops & judge are behind bars for this mockery of justice. Let's be frank: for this racist mockery of justice.

The two Coachellas 2012

This weekend, 225 thousand music fans converged in Indio, CA (near Palm Springs in the Coachella Valley) for the annual Coachella Music Festival, considered one of the world’s premiere music festivals. The western part of Coachella Valley--now one of the fastest growing areas in the country--has been a resort haven for millionaire movie stars & retired presidents since the 1920s & a haven for retired northerners (“snowbirds”) during the winter months.  Only 25 miles away, Eastern Coachella Valley is an agricultural area drawing 15,000 migrant farm workers during the growing season. Because no housing is provided for migrant workers, homelessness is a major problem with most forced to live out of their cars, on the streets, or in makeshift housing. Hundreds of illegal, unregulated trailer parks built on the cheap provide squalid housing for permanent residents & some migrants. Built on county lands (called unincorporated communities), these trailer parks lack sewage systems, clean drinking water, storm drains, trash pickup, & even power. As a result, residents are plagued by contaminated water & raw sewage backing up in the shower, overflowing in the streets every time it rains, sitting in stagnant pools in their yards. Children play in this raw sewage with rat, mosquito, & cockroach infestations. Residents attempt to treat these problems which the state ignores by flushing sewage into septic tanks & cesspools (which overflow regularly), by pouring bleach into sewage pools, by digging private sewage pits, but suffer from many public health problems including gastrointestinal illness, respiratory disease, skin infections, & other health problems in an area not served by public health facilities. This racist neglect by the state also means dozens of crops sold around the country are grown in surrounding fields fertilized by untreated sewage. Certainly the most disgusting of all the environmental outrages in the area is what has been termed “Mt. San Diego”, a 50-foot high pile of human poop dumped by San Diego on nearby Indian tribal land from 1989 until 1994, when a federal court ordered an end to the racist practice. Particulates from the massive heap of feces are dispersed by desert winds to the dozens of communities just a few miles away & emit a noxious stench impossible to shut out. Although the labor of migrant workers generates the enormous agricultural wealth of California, their conditions of life have been in this bereft & squalid state for generations, existing right next door to lavish wealth. In Coachella Valley, one has to drive through upscale golf courses where celebrity tournaments are played to get to these impoverished hell holes where mostly Latino Californians & migrant workers live. If the stench was near enough to affect the golf games, that pile of human manure would be removed forthwith by the state. In the bottom photo (by Max Whittaker), a 7-year old child plays in raw sewage flowing from the trailer park where he lives to the adjoining agricultural fields; the top photo is of the Coachella Music Festival 2012 (by Arkasha Stevenson/LA Times). Two venues only miles, yet worlds apart.

Iran says recovered data from US spy drone

Iran claimed on Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy drone that went down in the country last year, including information that the aircraft was used to spy on Osama bin Laden weeks before he was killed. Iran also said it was building a copy of the drone.

Similar unmanned surveillance planes have been used in Afghanistan for years and kept watch on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. But US officials have said little about the history of the particular aircraft now in Iran's possession.

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Palestinian women take back spring as settlers, soldiers look on

For the first time in years, a group of Palestinian women was able to reach the Nabi Saleh spring, which was taken over long ago by settlers. The women vowed to return, hoping to hold on to the spring.

Every Friday for the past three years or so, Nabi Saleh residents, along with Israeli and international supporters, have been demonstrating against the theft of their lands by settlers from the nearby settlement of Halamish. At the focus of the struggle is the attempt to reach the Al-Kous spring, which was taken over by settlers in recent years. Week after week, demonstrators march toward the spring, but are stopped by soldiers who disperse them with tear gas (sometimes aimed directly at protestors and once resulting on the death of a Nabi Saleh resident) with “skunk” water, severe beatings, arrests and more.

On Sunday, for the first time in years, a group of roughly 30 Palestinian women was able to make it to the spring. The group was made up of local women, who were joined by activists from other villages, and supporters from Ramallah and Jerusalem. Soldiers and settlers who arrived at the scene did not stop the women from picnicking around the spring. After a few hours, the group left, vowing to return.

“The point of this direct action was to reclaim what the settlers have stolen from us,” says Irene Nasser, one of the activists. “Many of us were very excited about being able to reach this beautiful place, after dozens of demonstrations during which we were barred from going there. The uniqueness of the action was also in that it was about women taking the popular struggle into their own hands and leading it together.”

Nasser believes that the soldiers did not react this time both due to the fact that they were facing a women-only group, and as a result of the Shalom Eisner story – in which an officer was caught on video beating a Danish peace activist – and the trauma it caused in the army’s ranks. In the coming weeks, the women plan to organize more direct actions, both in Nabi Saleh and elsewhere, in order to both challenge the army and empower the women taking part in the struggle.

A gated community for the poor

Wasn’t it just around 3 years ago when the US government doled out $700 billion of tax payers money to bail out the banks? Numerous exposés have since made quite clear that Obama & the gang rolled over for the banks by ignoring that financial fraud had been committed, that heads should roll & not be rewarded with bail outs, that time should be served at the penitentiary. To date, no bankers have paid consequences for their perjury & grand larceny. So imagine the shock of hearing that some of the very credit card banks that received bail out bucks (like Capital One & Discover) are now using the criminal justice system as a collection agency by getting people locked up & jailed for unpaid debts!? Although the US abolished debtors prisons in 1833, nearly a third of 50 states allow the sheriff to haul you in for arrears on credit card, auto, & other loans. According to an article in the Minneapolis paper, no statistics are kept from state to state on who is locked up or for how much debt but according to several sources, the number of arrest warrants for debtors is rising. Anyone with a credit card balance knows there’s no control over the interest rate because credit card companies operate like loan sharks with debt collectors as the new leg breakers. It’s such an alarming situation that even the moribund ACLU has been roused from torpor to issue alerts. (Whether they will defend debtors is another story.) We should not wait until the situation necessitates another Charles Dickens to catalog the crimes committed against the poor & indebted. Debtors prisons are not like Club Fed, the gated communities where the rich get manicured, waited on by valets, & golf while serving time; we’re talking Leavenworth, which is a gated community of a very different kind.
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf#page=6

Bread & circus media-syle

The media preoccupation with what is termed the “Colombian prostitution scandal” typifies everything that’s wrong with the media. Essential news about what is happening to millions of decent people around the world is replaced with this salacious diversion of the “bread & circus” kind. Dozens of reporters are following this “unfolding investigation” not because there’s a story there but to do damage control for the US Secret Service & the Pentagon. Getting to the bottom of the story today has entailed chasing down cab drivers, interviewing in brothels, & posting photos of one of the bikini-clad prostitutes involved. Prostitution is a vile institution which the US military has not only promoted through it’s occupations but has been legally charged with administering (the Subic Bay air base being a case in point). The military is one of the first places young men get introduced to the odious practice of women for sale. This bull & baloney story is phony journalism. It will do nothing to end US officials & military from patronizing prostitution & it’s unlikely to end the careers or effect the pensions of the creeps caught with their underwear down in Cartagena. It may enhance the incomes of a few divorce attorneys but primarily it will function to distract from demanding the US end its occupations which are all fully implicated in fostering prostitution.

Betty Windsor toilet paper

Everyone will honor Betty Windsor’s diamond jubilee in their own way. Many don’t take that well to curtsying & will consider this the most appropriate. And they will not be wrong. All proceeds from sales go to the International Alliance for Picking up this Feudal Nonsense by its Ears & Dumping it in the Toilet. (acronym CRAP)

New video shows shamed IDF goon struck several activists without clear provocation.

Haaretz - 20 April 2012

According to a statement, which was attached to the Palestinian television clip, by B’Tselem, Eisner is seen striking five different pro-Palestinian protesters in last Saturday’s incident.

Get all the latest updates from Haaretz.com’s Facebook page and Tumblr blog

In addition, and in an apparent contrast to Eisner’s own contention, there seem to be no signs of violence from the protesters toward IDF troops in general, or Eisner in particular.

On Wednesday, Gantz chose to dismiss Eisner, who was filmed over the weekend hitting a Danish protester with his rifle butt in the Jordan Valley after the recommendations of GOC Central Command Nitzan Alon and Sami Turgeman, commander of the IDF’s ground forces, on the grounds that the attack was a “moral failure.”

Gantz said that an investigation into the incident revealed operational failures in the preparation of IDF soldiers for the protest bike ride in which the activist took part as well as in the soldiers’ handling of the confrontation that erupted.

Eisner, who was due to receive the rank of colonel, will be transferred to a senior staff position and will be barred from carrying out any command position in the IDF in the next two years. As of 2014, Einser will be able to return to a command position, should he fulfill the necessary requirements.

Homeless in Beijing

Homeless in Beijing, China: a woman & her child begging outside the walls of the Forbidden City. A state calling itself socialist with one of the biggest economies in the world ought to be able, minimally, to provide housing to its citizens. Despite the immense failings of the USSR & the wretched quality of the housing, outright homelessness was virtually unknown while homelessness & begging on the streets is a common sight in China. Safe, suitable, & affordable housing is one of the most urgent issues facing billions of people around the world. Governments that stand in the way of that elementary human need will have to be given the Tahrir Square treatment & brought down.  (Photo by Wided Khadraoui)

For the moochocracy more is more & less is for the plebeian masses

We knew this diamond jubilee thing was going to be a year of excess but thought that meant just more hand waving & photo ops. Turns out the moochocracy thinks big on the public dole. They got 200,000 innocent little kids to do self portraits which must have been so charming until they turned them into this monstrous montage image of Betty lighting up Buckingham Palace. You know with all those bucks, you’d think they’d show more taste especially when they’re closing schools to pull off this extravaganza. But good judgement is more a plebeian quality. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd)

A Korean choir

North Korean children singing their little hearts out at a theater performance in Rason, North Korea. Judging from photos of adult choirs, the North Korean style of singing involves this charming if not also exaggerated mouth work. Still doesn't make me want to bomb them. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP)

Tahrir Square: la lucha continua

Hundreds of thousands of protestors pack Tahrir Square, Cairo, yesterday in the largest demonstration in months, setting off fireworks & demanding the end of military rule. Through the use of extreme repression the military thought they had regained the upper hand & offered recycled generals for a slate of candidates in the upcoming elections. The Egyptian uprising is making chopped liver out of such chicanery & aint it glorious to see!? (Photo by Khalil Hamra/AP)

Throwing away the Disqus..

I'm going to get rid of Disqus comments app as I've discovered that it's rather invasive and asks too many "questions" before posting, every single time!. Bugger that!. We need a simpler comments facility but for the life of me I'm not able to revert to Blogger's default one. I'll try to get help to reinstall it as soon as possible.

The Servant Leader

Modern politics is obviating the need for comedians although it’s opening up plenty of room for tragedians. Who needs the Three Stooges when you’ve got Rummey, Obomba, Psychozy, & Blare? This week, sleazy war criminal Tony Blare was invited to be keynote speaker at the inaugural World Leaders Conference in Florida. It’s a new group of Christian fundamentalist ministers & rich guys who invited Blare because of his Faith Foundation “promoting respect between religions & to make the case for faith as a force for good in the world”. (Please don’t interrupt this narrative with rude laughter or the sound of throwing up.) Tickets to the two-day invitation only event were priced from $695 to $1,295 apiece & only 400 people were invited. Of great concern to the delusional participants was defining who they are as “Servant Leaders”. (Will you please stop throwing up!) In his speech, which had even the ministers in a coma, Blare, the noted dumb ass & war criminal, said he has a deeper sense of the urgency of dealing with radical Islam since leaving office. He didn’t divulge what methods were more urgent than the bombing & shooting he employed. The assembled elite talked about the need for “transformational learning” so they could become not just more effective leaders but better people. (Please stop retching!) The conference was a cornucopia of such delusional idiocies but the most endearing was its contest for defining a Servant Leader. This beauty only won second place but certainly takes the cake: “Servant leadership is about where your heart is. It begins there, at the center. It is first about being selfless, and acting selflessly. It is being humble, but not timid. It is acting based upon principle and not outcome. The true servant leader doesn’t swim against the current for the sake of swimming against the current, or for adulation, they forge ahead with courage because they know to their core, it is the right thing to do. Servant leadership is the manifestation of the truth through strength, integrity, and character.” (Don’t make me warn you one more time about throwing up!) In response to all this bull, today is officially declared “Hate on Tony Blair Day” & you’re all invited, nay urged, to throw horse manure at his photo. (Photo by Richard Graulich/The Palm Beach Post)

A Palestinian mayor issues desperate appeal to the world to restore his village’s lifeline

Haj Sami Sadiq, at destroyed road last October

Yesterday the Israeli army again destroyed roads linking Al Aqaba in the Jordan Valley (Area C) to neighboring villages. This is the letter Mayor Haj Sami Sadiq wrote yesterday. His update of conditions is near the end....

We, the 300 residents of the community of Al Aqaba, which has been in existence for generations, owners and inhabitants of the land even before the entrance of the IDF, are addressing you as a last resort. For decades Israeli soldiers used the village as a training area, a playground where live ammunition was used, which took the lives of 8 of our people and injured 38. Amongst them the head of our municipality Haj Sami Sadik, who as a result is now paralyzed from the waist down .

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Building the barricades

The women of Bahrain show here why the oligarchs want women kept in domestic servitude.The oligarchs must know our history. Women’s fierce & fearless role in revolutions is no new-fangled phenomenon but is a feature of political resistance all the way back to the Amazons. Stories (some say myths) of Amazons or women warriors exist in many cultures; many believe they emerged in opposition to the formation of patriarchy. Now we see them before our very eyes in the Arab uprisings against another form of tyranny. Here women protestors in Manama, Bahrain build a cement barricade against riot police at a rally to support Abdullah Al-Khawaja (a jailed human rights activist in poor health from a hunger strike) & demand his release to the Danish government for sanctuary. We don’t know how far these revolutions will go but we do know they have just begun & they aren’t going anywhere without women in the lead. (Photo by Hamad I. Mohammed)

Children are always the first victims of inequity

There are so many things about child labor that show the oligarch’s contempt for working people but nothing so damning as the reckless disregard for children’s health & safety. This young boy works in an aluminum cooking pot factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We aren’t told who owns & operates the factory or where the pots are sold. It may damn well be expensive department stores like Macy’s or Marks & Spencer or even dumps like Walmart. The extreme toxicity of aluminum to human beings has been known for nearly 100 years. Aluminum dust causes brain & other body dysfunctions (including Alzheimer’s) & is an eye & respiratory tract irritant. The recklessness of subjecting children to such health hazards, which will make their lives hellish & brief, cannot be too harshly denounced or too strongly opposed. (Photo by Munir uz Zaman/Agence France-Presse)

The tough cookies of Yemen

These women & hundreds of others in Sana’a, Yemen have been protesting & camping in a public square for over a year to demand regime change in Yemen & the prosecution of the old dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The US-backed regime tried to snooker them with a deal leaving the regime intact, giving immunity from prosecution to Saleh, & denying justice to those murdered & incarcerated during the uprising. The intransigence of these protestors has not just broadened the parameters of political resistance but also the dimensions of the struggle for women’s emancipation. As we know from the women’s & civil rights struggles (Trayvon Martin being the latest example), attire has political importance. There’s something about veiled women leading a revolution that jangles perceptions & prejudices & gives the struggle for women’s & democratic rights a new energy & a new leadership. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah)

The tough cookies of Bahrain

The women of Bahrain are out in force standing up ferociously against the US-backed regime to demand the release of jailed human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja. Al-Khawaja has been on hunger strike for two months now in Manama. Since he has dual citizenship, the government of Denmark requested he be released to their custody. Bahrain courts just denied that request despite his failing health. What ironic symmetry that behind the veil which became the symbol of Islamophobia is another tough cookie not cowed by the combined might of Bahraini riot police, Pakistani soldiers, Saudi tanks, & the US 5th fleet. (Photo by Ahmed Jadallah)

A reptile by any other name

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t this Monsieur Psychozy?  (Photo by Amos Chapple & not intended for this purpose)

Captivity does not become living creatures

This very sad little Mangabey monkey, born March 5th, at the Jardin des Plantes zoo in Paris, France was rejected by his mother & is being tended by a keeper. He is part of the European breeding of endangered species program (EEP). Such maternal rejections may happen in the wild but are more likely for stressed captive animals. Rejected animals remain vulnerable to illness & subject to early death since they often don’t develop & never really recover from the emotional wound no matter how much loving attention is given them by human caretakers. In a humane society, zoos will be outlawed.  (Photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP)

Kick ass or die!

Senior citizens protest outside the National Assembly in Managua, Nicaragua, to demand government pensions of $136 per month. Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti & subject to the same economic predations by US & other foreign investors. Nicaragua is primarily an agricultural country; agricultural products constitute 60% of its total exports. Under the US-Central America free trade agreement (CAFTA-DR) entered in 2006, maquila manufacturing industries increased which produce & assemble products for export. The maquila/free trade sector contributes more market value to the economy than agriculture but employs fewer people & makes no provisions for worker’s social security.  Nicaraguans must depend heavily for survival on remittances from relatives working abroad, mainly in the US & Costa Rica (over $900 million in 2011) & 65% of all workers still earn a living in the informal sector. Despite President Daniel Ortega’s rhetoric against neoliberalism, he has implemented an IMF program of “free market policies” which require attacks on worker’s rights & social securities. Pensions have been a focus of IMF attacks in countries around the world because as the neoliberal oligarchs see it, when a working person doesn’t produce profit for them anymore, they’re a drain on the economy & it’s fiscally advantageous to starve them to death. As seniors see it, it's politically advantageous to start kicking ass. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP)

Jenny Tonge's Victory over the Lobby

Jenny Tonge.

By Ramzy Baroud

'My Lords, I was in Gaza six weeks ago,' began Baroness Tonge, when she spoke at the House of Lords in January 2009. 'Now, as a result of the impotence of the international community, not just in Gaza, but…over 40 years of occupation of Palestine by Israel, those institutions that I visited are rubble and many of the children with whom I played are dead.'

Jenny Tonge, then a member of the UK’s Liberal Democrat party, was a dangerous British politician as far as Israel was concerned. She not only dared to use strong language while referencing Israeli actions in the occupied territories, she also demanded action from her government

For this she was subjected to the same, predictable verbal abuse by Israeli officials and media, by the pro-Israeli British lobby, and even by some of her peers. However, calling Tonge ‘anti-Semitic’ was never going to be convincing. The formidable woman has spent years of her life serving her community – as a doctor, MP and spokesperson for Health for Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords – and has amassed far too much credibility to be shaken by defamatory accusations.

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