The Minutemen managed a feeble march today in downtown L.A. on the same route taken by the historic immigrant rights marches of March 25 and May 1. Those marches drew several hundred thousand each, maybe a million. The Minutemen could only bring 100 or so, which speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Plus, there were more of us counter-protesters than they were of them.

They pretend to be a mass movement yet their pathetic turnout eloquently demonstrates they are not.

We of ANSWER L.A. followed them the entire march with our shopping cart sound system. It has speakers on poles, runs off a car battery, and can really crank out the volume. I was pushing it. Several people in other groups said to me, you ANSWER people really know how to organize for an event like this.

When they got to the rally spot, we set up across the street, and succeeded in distracting them to the point they couldn’t have their rally.

The Minutemen, despite their recent attempt at cleaning up their image, are racist to the core, allied with extreme right elements, and need to be challenged whenever they crawl out from under their rock. Every time they’ve tried something in southern California, there’s been more of us than them, and today was no exception.

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Marriage ban closes the gates to Palestinians

In approving an effective ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians this week, Israel’s Supreme Court has shut tighter the gates of the Jewish fortress the state of Israel is rapidly becoming. The judges’ decision, in the words of the country’s normally restrained Haaretz daily, was “shameful”.

Other non-Jewish spouses (read mainly Europeans and Americans) will face age and income requirements and be expected to affirm a loyalty oath — not to Israel, but to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. In keeping with current policy, non-Jews are unlikely to receive citizenship but may be eligible for residency rights.

Israel is a religious state. Non-Jews can’t be full citizens. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians echoes the apartheid of South Africa. Israel as a state would not exist with the financial backing of the U.S. Israel gets more foreign aid from the U.S. - something like 5-6 billion a year - than any other country does.

The U.S. and Israel screamed at Palestinians to be a “democracy” and have a election. They did so, electing Hamas. Now members of Congress are tripping over themselves to block aid to them, saying they must renounce violence towards Israel first. Yet they never ever mention the violence done by Israel against Palestinians. Assault helicopters and missiles vs. suicide bombers . Hardly an even match, now is it? Yet public opinion is now shifting towards Palestine.

The U.S. and Israel are also blocking Palestinians from receiving their own tax money by refusing to disburse it.

The fact that Israel collects Palestinian taxes and has the power to decide whether or not to turn them over to the PNA makes the colonial nature of the relationship between the two entities crystal clear.

Instead they want to, quite literally, starve Palestinians instead.

“It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner but won’t die,” the Israeli prime minister’s top advisor told several leading Israeli officials following the Palestinian elections in January. Among those who reportedly “rolled with laughter” at this grotesque “joke” were Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the army chief of staff and the head of the secret police. (Ha’aretz, Feb. 14, 2006)

The use of food as a weapon demolishes any pretense of Israeli or U.S. “democracy,” and illuminates the real and vicious character of imperialism.

Yet Palestinians persist. You see the Palestinian flag at demonstrations worldwide now. It’s like Che, a symbol of resistance. The tide is turning too, as word of what really happened seeps through the walls of lies and propaganda. The Palestinians were driven off their land at gunpoint, with some being put on forced death marches. Many have now lived in refugee camps for decades.

Palestinians have, under international law, the Right of Return. Seems only fair, doesn’t it, to be able to return to the land you were forced from?

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Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (”Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

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Britney’s baby.

The McCartney’s divorce.

The Da Vinci Code.

American Idol.

This has been a Public Service Announcement from Polizeros.

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