Israel keeps killing kids with impunity (video)

Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Mo Omer, Aaron Mate, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org, Aug. 4, 2014)

As Israel's kill toll in Gaza tops 1,800, Dr. Mona El-Farra mourns loss of 9 innocent relatives in Israeli strike

• Thousands of Americans protest U.S. support for Israel's assault on Gaza in Washington, D.C.

Israel kills dozens more in Rafah

The United States [minus our shadow government reveling in profits for the military-industrial complex] and the United Nations have condemned Israel after an airstrike killed 10 people near the entrance of a U.N. school sheltering Palestinian civilians.

The school was reportedly being used as a shelter for about 3,000 people, most of them terrified children. It was the second illegal targeting of a U.N. school by Israel in less than a week. It tried to pin its first attack on Hamas to deflect international criticism but was conclusively shown to be the culprit, making Israel a "terrorist state" once again. And it was the seventh such crime against humanity over the course of Israel’s offensive war on Gaza.

Music for Judeo-Christian soldiers

Jewish American youth aspire to go to Israel to kill Palestinians, fly safe missions as glorious, state-sponsored Air Force terrorists, defend their other country from the unruly natives. It has in just 50 years packed the indigenous population into two teeming camps in which they are concentrated, open air prisons, non-Jewish neighborhoods, ghettos called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where they are fish in a barrel to be shot at. Wonder what they listen to on their iPads as they kill, Florida's Cannibal Corpse maybe? "They think they know who I am/ All they know is I love to kill/ Face down, dead on the ground/ Find me before another is found/ I come alive in the darkness [night raids]/ Left murdered and nameless/ Dead, unburied, and rotten/ Half eaten by insects.../ They're all dead, they're all dead/ They're all dead, by [our invasion]... It felt so good to kill/ I took their lives away/ Seven dead, lying rotten/ Unburied victims their naked bodies putrefy [and get eaten by animals]/... They're all dead, they're all dead/ They're all dead, by [our invasion]/ I come alive in the darkness/ Left murdered and nameless/ Dead, unburied, and rotten/ Half eaten by insects..."

US, we deserve protection not US bombs

The coordinates of the school were reportedly communicated to the Israel "Defense" Force no fewer than 33 times, the last time just an hour before the shelling. That is, there is no way Israel did not know exactly what they were targeting and shelling in violation of international law and Geneva Conventions. 

 

Shortly after Israel’s attack on Sunday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying: "The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon characterized the attack as "a moral outrage and a criminal act." [Will PM Netanyahu be dragged to the Hague? Not if U.S. politicians and CIA officials can help it.] 

DN! gets an update from Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) for Palestine Refugees. More

Israel's new policy: Kill Everything That Moves: "Everything that moves in Rafah is a target": Israel continues shelling civilians in Gaza during short "pause" [that serves mostly to draw out more human targets as relative try to gather corpses and body parts for dignified burials] 

 

The number of Palestinians murdered by Israel in Gaza has topped 1,800 as the Israeli offensive enters its 28th day. On yesterday [Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014], at least 10 people were killed when Israel illegally shelled another U.N. school shelter for Palestinian civilians.

 

Why kill Gazans when you can kill Gaia?

The U.S. has officially called the attack "disgraceful," while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned it as a "moral outrage and a criminal act." It was the seventh U.N. school hit since Israel’s offensive began. The U.N., meanwhile, is warning of a "rapidly unfolding" health crisis in Gaza as large parts of the territory had their power and running water taken out by targeted Israeli strikes, and around 400,000 are now displaced by Israel's war of aggression on its segregated indigenous population.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed since a 72-hour ceasefire collapsed on Friday [Aug. 1, 2014]. Over the weekend, the Israeli government admitted that a soldier it had used as war propaganda by reporting him [Hadar Goldin] as "captured and taken hostage by Hamas" was actually killed in a battle as he attacked badly outgunned Hamas resisters.

Earlier today, Israel announced a unilateral seven-hour truce ("pause") in most of the Gaza Strip, except for Rafah, where Israel has concentrated its bombardment. Palestinians have already accused Israel of breaking its own ceasefire by launching deadly attacks on the Shati refugee camp, another crime against humanity. DN! goes live to Gaza City to speak with its correspondent Mohammed Omer, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who has family in Rafah. More

 

"Disgraceful," "criminal act [aka war crime]": Israel is condemned as 10 die in another of its strikes on U.N. shelters in Gaza

 

Likely solution for a lasting ceasefire was on the table before Israeli assault & over 1,800 dead

CIA's other spy scandal: Agency spied on emails between Congress & whistleblowing officials

Part 2: Weapons expert Theodore Postol asks, Is Israel’s Iron Dome really an Iron Sieve?

Part two of  interview with acclaimed MIT physicist Theodore Postol, who says there is no evidence Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system is actually working. Prof. Postol estimates that the Iron Dome, which is partially built by U.S. corporate war-profiteers Raytheon, intercepts just 5 percent of rockets fired at Israel.

• Part I: Iron Dome or Iron Sieve? Evidence says...

• Palestinian death toll tops 1,800; UN condemns "criminal" Israeli shelling of another school for displaced
• U.N. warns of "rapidly unfolding" Gaza health crisis [Communicable diseased will spike due to Israel's war crimes targeting water, power, sanitation -- killing more civilians than its thousands of tons dropped on their homes, streets, and U.N. shelters.] 
• Israel breaks unilateral "pause" with new illegal airstrike
• Obama floats executive action after Congress fails to pass immigration bills
• Pres. Obama backs extreme right-wing CIA Director after Senate spying prompts resignation calls [over felonies he committed by perjury]
• U.S. Pres. Obama admits "We tortured some folks" — and that not all Bush-era methods are banned
• Ebola death in West Africa toll tops 820
• Over 400,000 under water ban in Ohio; toxic [chemtrails and/or] algae bloom linked to Climate Chaos, industrial-scale Big Agra farming
• Suspicious [HAARP?] earthquake kills around 400 in Chinese province
• Report: USAID staged civic programs to destabilize Cuban gov’t
• Choking-killing of civilian Eric Garner by NYPD brutality ruled a "homicide"
• Israel kills over 200 after another phony ceasefire collapses; claim of captured soldier [which was a lie] retracted
• Hundreds protest record number of deportations outside White House
• 2 Americans return to U.S. for Ebola treatment

Litha 2014: Pagans welcome Summer Solstice

CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Antonia Blumberg (HuffingtonPost.com, June 21, 2014, AP)

The summer solstice arrives in the northern hemisphere on June 21 at 6:51 am EDT, bringing us the longest day in the year -- which means lots of extra sunlight for festivities. The day is also considered to be sacred by many pagans and Wiccans around the world who celebrate the solstice among their other yearly holidays.

Some refer to the summer solstice as "Litha," a term that may derive from 8th century monk Bede's The Reckoning of Time. Bede names "Litha" as the Latin name for both June and July in ancient times.

 

The summer solstice is one of four solar holidays, along with the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. The other major pagan holidays are Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh.

 

 

Observers celebrate the solstice in myriad ways, including festivals, parades, bonfires, feasts and more. As one member of the Amesbury and Stonehenge Druids explains, "What you're celebrating on a mystical level is that you're looking at light at its strongest. It represents things like the triumph of the king, the power of light over darkness, and just life -- life at its fullest."

 

 

Celebrations for the summer solstice take place around the world, and not all are pagan-affiliated. One of the biggest pagan celebrations occurs at Stonehenge in England, but others take place among indigenous Latin and South American communities, and in Russia, Spain, and other countries.

 

 

As the official first day of summer, the solstice is a time of celebration. Cities around the world will mark the day with spiritual and secular celebrations, like this yoga festival in New York's Times Square, expected to draw thousands for some mid-city, summer realignment. More (PHOTOS)

Cinco de Mayo means Latin culture in USA

Pfc. Sandoval, Mexican Buddhist Irma Quintero, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

No one celebrates it in Mexico, but we sure love it in the US. What is Cinco de Mayo? The "Fifth of May" commemorates a time when Mexico rebuffed and repelled French imperial troops who were sent in to collect banking debts. They were defeated and turned away (but returned a year later and succeeded).

Brentwood, L.A. (Lalo Alacaraz/GoComics)

No one in Mexico would think to celebrate the fiasco, choosing instead to commemorate the September 16th "Mexican Independence Day" revolution that overthrew Spanish imperial rule. Long after Buddhism arrived, Spain came to Mexico and wiped out millions in waves of genocides that introduced chattel slavery, disease, mass rape, incarceration, the death penalty, corporate business, and deadly forms of Christianity -- mostly, but not exclusively, Holy Roman Imperial Catholicism.

Of course, the day is now debased in a 4th of July-style Beer and BBQ fest. Why drink Bud when you can have a Corona and enrich corporations on both sides of the border? Viva la revolución!

Satirist/Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz is a Pacifica Radio co-host in Los Angeles (KPFK FM)

• VIDEO: I'm a Mexican Buddhist
• Native American Buddhism: How Swans Came to the Lake

I'm a Mexican Buddhist (video)

Crystal I. Quintero, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (PART 1)

Mexican-American in L.A. Sit and sit, wait and wait, grow and grow (Yoga9v/facebook)

Nathalie Cardone sings "Hasta Siempre" (Forever, lit. Until Always) subtitled lyrics

Devotion (Guido Dingemans/flickr.com)

Can one be Latin American and Buddhist? It seems like such an American, particularly a Californian, thing to do. Then I think, California was Latin America, a part of Mexico, until it was invaded and annexed by the USA. This was during the American-Spanish War, post British colonial invasion, after Columbus and the Conquistadores buttered up the people with European diseases and sadistic Old World ways.

The amazing thing is that Mexico and Mesoamerica (the stretch of land between North America and South America), El Norte being the US, Canada, and Greenland, was Buddhist long before it was Catholic, Christian, or agnostic.

Ernesto Che Guevara Lynch, Latin-Irish revolutionary hero

(Society for Irish Latin American Studies)

Afghan Buds in America

For long ago Asian Buddhist monks from China visited and shared a wealth of advanced technological knowledge about spirituality, religion, pottery, art, food, and everything (and everyone) under the Sun.

It's how the Native Americans -- the American "Indians," the First Nations of Canada, the Indigenous Mexicans, the Inuit of Alaska and Greenland -- got such advanced spiritual knowledge while presumably living like cave dwellers in a "savage" pre-colonial environment.

Hope Sandoval, once lead singer of Mazzy Star, performing their greatest hit, "Fade Into You"

Which world-religion was first?

Wisdom Quarterly has covered much of this shocking new historical territory (with Rick Fields, Edward P. Vining, the History Channel, National Geographic, Hendon Harris, and others), so the real question is, Why would any modern person prefer to find guidance in the Enlightened One?

If the first Noble Truth is "All conditioned existence is disappointing or unsatisfactory," my own suffering, particularly in the Love Department, resonates with that. I weep, I hurt, I'm happy to roll in disappointing-sensuality, and I'm yet to be fulfilled. 

When I date, I fade into you. When I yearn for social justice, I want to be Che and always and forever fight for freedom and justice, not in name like imperial US wars but in truth. Like, maybe, the real struggle for liberation I need to wage is for personal liberation. It would help everyone around me, it would free me, and it would lead to world peace or peace in the world anyway. I am you, you are me, we're different, we're the same, we're all one, we've yet to meet... So you see, the Buddha is the best guide to find the freedom and light he found. Buena suerte (Good luck).

Hiking to Native American Los Angeles

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Arroyo Seco Foundation; SaveHahamongna.org

Which "devil"? Hungry Sasquatch, angry watershed floods, silly rock formation? (ASF)

Pasadena opposes what LA proposes: future site after removal of all life and silt (ASF)

  

L.A. watershed (savehahamongna.org)

HAHAMONGNA, Arroyo Seco - "Learn to identify local native plants on this hike through the Arroyo, along with the various food, medicinal, spiritual, and practical uses that this rich habitat provided to the area's original inhabitants" screamed the poster.

 

Tongva villages of the Los Angeles basin

We were in! We met up at the world-famous Rose Bowl Stadium ready to hike to the Jet Propulsion Lab site Saturday morning. Everyone gathered, eager to learn, socialize, and smell the aromatic chaparral, flowers, and berries. 

  

Volunteering to clean the Arroyo (ASF)

There are Hollywood (toyon), elder, and manzanita berries. Wild buckwheat and a variety of acorns are staple foods. Coyote bush cures poison ivy and oak rash. Mule fat wood is best for fire sticks, and mugwort gives sweet dreams and keeps embers burning. Outreach Coordinator Tim Martinez taught us well. Meanwhile, on another ridge miles to the east, the Colby fire was smoldering and only 30% contained.

Tongva/Los Angeles River, foothills, and San Gabriel Valley (Hometown-Pasadena.com)

   

Who were the Native Americans here, the First Nation people of Los Angeles? They were the Tongva (Gabrieliño, Fernandeño, Nicoleño -- Europeanized names after Spanish colonization). The name is disputed; the people are not. There were various minor tribes, and everyone fled to Mexico to save their lives from the Anglo invaders from the east coast.

WILD PLANTS: In Australia, a walkabout is a sacred rite of passage one undergoes to find oneself by being immersed in nature. In SoCal, the Hahamongna Walkabout, hosted by Tim Martinez (ASF), seeks to inspire by guided tours through this rare spot near JPL (kcet.org).

 

Healing With Medicinal Plants

Save Hahamongna from bulldozers!
HOW TO: Wilderness Survival Skills (PrimitiveWays.com)
Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West: Cultural and Scientific Basis for Their Use (by Chumash healing woman)
Medicinal Plants of the American West 

Study proposes L.A. River/Arroyo Seco confluence urban riverfront

WITS (Minn. Public Radio)

First Buddhist University, USA

Selling off sacred Hopi artifacts (audio)

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; A Martinez, Leo Duran (Take Two/KPCC/SCPR.org)

Sacred Hopi Kachina figurines, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, USA (heard.org)

  

Don't look! Kachinam or "friends" (Laurel Morales)

The Hopis say Katsina masks, which are embodiments of devas, cannot be sold. These fantastic artifacts invested with life are usually given to a young girl at a public ceremony as a blessing and part of her education.

 

But in France, a judge will decide today whether 32 Hopi artifacts can go up for sale at an "art" auction. However the Hopi tribe, indigenous Native Americans or First Nations people, say those objects contain the spirits of ancestors, and selling them as commercial art is illegal.

 

The question "What is Art?" can have an open-ended answer. But what if that art is a really important part of one's own culture? A French judge will decide whether they can go up for sale at an art auction.
 
Laurel Morales is a reporter for Fronteras (frontiers, borders) based in Flagstaff, Arizona. She explains the details and whether this case may end different than a similar suit earlier this year. LISTEN

Georgia O'Keefe in New Mexico: ...Katsinam and the Land

• A look back at Nelson Mandela's fight to end apartheid
• Nelson Mandela's influence on the US film industry
• Flashback: Job numbers, minimum wage, Obamacare...
• L.A. resident remembers growing up under apartheid
• Ken Burns' doc "Yosemite: A Gathering of Spirit"
• Obama and students at his [alleged] alma mater, Occidental college, in the 1980s pressed the university to divest from racist South Africa
• CSULA conference: Millennials are shaping the future
• Goya painting makes its West Coast debut
• LA School Board: Margueritte Lamotte dies unexpectedly
• Academy of Motion Pictures celebrates the films of 1913
• Navigating the 2014 FIFA World Cup draw
• Rapping about science? (Wu-Tang Clan's GZA)

Happy Indigenous-Genocide Day! (video)

un-Happy Columbus Day (see)
I. Rony, Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; SantiagoTimes.cl; HuffingtonPost.com; America.AlJazeera.com; BigStory.AP.org; DemocracyNow.org

Native American Day (American Indian Day) is a state holiday in California, established in 1968 to honor Native American cultures and contributions to the state and the US.

Hey, is that the mast of an imperial fleet coming from the sea to invade, rape, and kill us all? What are you talking about? I don't see nothing. (Day-Off)

     

We laugh, we cry, we joke, we point out irony.

Clashes broke out between state sponsored police and indigenous protesters and their supporters in Chile's capital following a demonstration by thousands marching for indigenous rights on Saturday.

The Santiago Times reports protesters took to Santiago's streets on "Columbus" Day for political self-determination and to protest the government's role in land theft disputes in the country's south.

 

Genocidal conqueror (morzadec.es.free.fr)

The newspaper adds that while the protest started peacefully, groups of hooded demonstrators [or agent provocateurs sent in by police] vandalized street signs and sidewalks. Riot police answered [the planned provocation] with tear gas and water cannons.

The march was organized by the Mapuches, Chile's largest indigenous group, Al Jazeera notes. According to the Associated Press, the word Mapuche means "people of the land," and the group remains among those fighting for independence despite many Indian groups ending resistance to the Spanish [imperial] conquest in the late 19th century. 

"Look what I discovered!" "How awkward." Columbus Day invasion (iamhobab.com)

 

"Today is NOT a day to celebrate. It is a day to condemn and repudiate all the abuses that we’ve suffered for more than 500 years," one protester said, according to Democracy Now!

"We’re here today to tell the Chilean state and current government that we shall resist, that we shall be in defense and in resistance to what’s happening in the (Mapuche) territory."
  

In Chile, thousands of Mapuche indigenous people and their supporters took to the streets of the capital Santiago in an anti-Columbus Day march Saturday. The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group. They are calling for the return of ancestral lands and an end to the targeting of Mapuche activists under a supposed "anti-terrorism" law. One protester condemned the day marking 521 years since Christopher (Cristobal) Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Meulen Huencho: "Today is not a day to celebrate.... More

Columbus invaded the future US in 1492 (CT)

Chile has used a controversial anti-terrorism law instituted under Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship to prosecute Mapuche Indians. The government accuses indigenous groups of using violence in their struggle to recover ancestral land.

 

According to U.N. special investigator on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson, Chile's government has used the law to discriminate against the Mapuche. More + Video

Indigenous People's Day

Wisdom Quarterly (Wikipedia edit)

Almost any holiday is a good holiday if it means a day off (greetingcarduniverse.com)

 

Indigenous People's Day (also known as NATIVE AMERICAN DAY) is a holiday celebrated in various localities in the United States.

It was begun as a counter-celebration to the implicitly racist, imperialist, genocide-celebrating Columbus Day. Its purpose is to promote Native American culture and commemorate the history of the Native peoples of the Americas. The celebration began in Berkeley, California and Denver, Colorado as a socially and historically conscious alternative to Columbus Day, which is listed as a federal holiday in the United States but in protest is not observed as a state holiday in every state.

Queen, I'll conquer and enslave "India"...

Indigenous People's Day is usually held on the second Monday of October, coinciding with the federal government's official observance. The idea of replacing Columbus Day with a day celebrating the indigenous people of North America first arose in 1977 from the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, sponsored by the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1990, at the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Quito, Ecuador... More

Couldn't see the mass murderers coming?
David Hambling ("I See No Ships: Questioning Perceptual Blindness," ForteanTimes.com)
European explorers found indigenous peoples unable to see their tall ships -- or did they? Are people blind to unexplained phenomena because their brains simply can’t handle anything they don’t understand? This story, quoted in social science circles and popular with New Agers, was repeated in the recent film What The Bleep Do We Know? – “When the tall European ships first approached the early Native Americans, it was such an ‘impossible’ vision in their reality that their highly filtered perceptions couldn’t register what was happening, and they literally failed to ‘see’ the ships.” More