Funeral of Waseem Malla & Naseer Pandit in Kashmir

Funeral of Waseem Malla (Javaidd Naikoo) Apr 8 2016

This remarkable photo was taken yesterday at the funeral procession of Kashmiri activists Waseem Malla & Naseer Pandit attended by over 70,000 people. Those in the trees are trying to view the passing cortege/protest. The two young men were killed by Indian troops in a shootout 55 km/34 miles from Srinagar. The murders set off massive anti-occupation protests in the district where a police vehicle was torched & many protesters injured in clashes with Indian occupying forces. Businesses & shop owners observed a complete shutdown for the mourning.

The Indian army’s version of the shootout follows the same script as all the other executions: two known militants were hiding out in a house; the Indian army trapped them by cordoning off the area; the two tried to escape ‘by opening indiscriminate fire’ & were killed in a field outside the village by return fire from soldiers. No explanation for how they got out of the house where they were trapped, past the cordon, & into the field outside the village.

We’re expected to sympathize with the murders of these “wanted terrorists” by hearing they were members of a guerrilla group. But it’s even more common for the Indian army in Kashmir to fire live bullets & tear gas at unarmed protesters, causing countless deaths & serious injuries. Countless stone-throwers, part of the Kashmir Intifada, are also assaulted & arrested. So it doesn’t seem to matter to the Indian occupying army whether Kashmiri youth carry a gun (allegedly), a rock, or just march against the occupation.

The alibi for summary executions of youth in Kashmir is canned–just like Israeli claims that every Palestinian they execute charged a soldier or civilian with a knife.

Our deepest respect to the two young men. May they Rest In Peace. Our fullest solidarity with the struggle for Kashmiri self-determination.

(Photo by Kashmiri journalist Javaidd Naikoo)

Somalia “famine”: another form of genocide

Somalia drought (Feisal Omar:Reuters) Apr 8 2016

The Guardian-UK caption to this photo read, “Hargeysa, Somalia: Children look at their sheep suffering during the El Nino-related drought.” Meanwhile, media for the most part remains dead silent about the one million people, including 58,000 children, in Somalia facing death by starvation.

They can blame it on El Nino, they can blither on about crop failure (without mentioning US drone bombing that makes sustainable agriculture impossible) but there were recent droughts caused by El Nino in California & Texas & the supermarkets & livestock feed stores were stacked to the ceilings.

Mass starvation is not a weather problem–though it is becoming so due to climate change caused by neoliberal economic policies like deforestation. Mass starvation is a political problem caused by racism & colonialism. If the US can afford to send bombers to Somalia, it sure as hell can afford to airlift massive food & water relief–& it would if it gave a rat’s ass about human beings more than it cared about profits from plunder.

The ubiquitous image of Africa is emaciated suffering children. It’s fundamentally a white supremacist image to evoke pity & justify military intervention. It’s actually an image that goes back decades to mask colonialism & make Africans appear incapable of managing survival & their own affairs. It included campaigns among children in the 1940s to give their pennies to ‘save the pagan babies of Africa.’ Now the Pentagon is gearing up, with deployment of troops under Obama, & CIA operations in several countries, to ‘save the pagan babies’ with bombs & re-colonize the continent.

Learning about African countries to prevent military interventions includes understanding what these “famines” which afflict Africa are really all about.

(Photo by Feisal Omar/Reuters)

Activists disrupt deportations from Greece

Disrupting deportations (Petros Giannakouris:AP) Apr 8 2016

For the past week, there have been conflicting reports about the deportation of Afghan & Pakistani refugees from Greece to Turkey. On Monday, over 200 were sent from the refugee concentration camp at Moria on the island of Lesbos back to Turkey where they will live in squalor under a repressive regime. By Tuesday, it was being announced deportations were halted for procedural reasons but would be resumed today.

This is the scene today at Lesbos where human rights activists are attempting to disrupt the deportation of Pakistani refugees on a ferry set to sail for Turkey.

Our deepest regrets to the refugees that solidarity is still too weak to defend their rights or end those monstrous wars; our fullest respect to the activists who place their bodies in front of the boats, but they won’t be able to stop those boats for long before soldiers are moved in to arrest them. What they need is the big battalions of international solidarity at rallies outside embassies demanding: Immigration is a human right; open the borders.

(Photo tby Petros Giannakouris/AP)

New Dutch website tracks Israeli crimes against Palestinians

Palestinian solidarity activists in the Netherlands have developed a marvelous website which compiles Israeli transgressions against Palestinians, including: arsons; attacks in the sea on fishermen from Gaza; intimidation & violence at checkpoints; extrajudicial executions & deadly encounters; raids, kidnappings, arrests by soldiers; annexations, expropriations, demolitions; restrictions on water, electricity, goods, customs, self determination, censorship etc.; political prisoner issues, charges, court hearings; & other abuses.

If you look around the website, you’ll see it’s an encyclopedic source of information detailing the violent, controlling character of the Israeli occupation. The site, which has both a Dutch & English version, is called Staat van Beleg, meaning State of Siege, a name they chose because of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

http://staatvanbeleg.com/2016/04/06/overview-march-2016/

Tariq Ali posted this statement on his Facebook wall:

“New York is vital for the Sanders campaign. If the Bronx rally anything to go by it might be possible. Even now WITHOUT the anti-democratic ‘super-delegates’ the race is closer than anyone would have thought. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Bernie his victory would be a huge blow against all the enemies of the Left, so grandstanding at the moment is unhelpful. If he can’t pull it off, the big question is whether a sizeable chunk of his supporters are prepared to break with the Democrats and organise independently. That would be Sanders’ lasting legacy. Better still if he carried on the fight as an indy candidate. Utopian? Probably. In these bad times ANYTHING progressive needs to be pushed forward…”

What does that mean? What does grandstanding mean in this context? Does it mean refrain from calling Sanders out for his reactionary views on drones, Israel, & undocumented immigrants? Even if Sanders “carried on the fight as an indy candidate,” are his politics sufficient for the times we live in & the massive crises we face? “ANYTHING progressive needs to be pushed forward”? Does that mean we have to accept campaign rhetoric like it was good coin?

That statement sounds like a battle cry but it’s a whimper of defeat.

Wikileaks is reporting that USAID & George Soros funded the Panama Papers to discredit Putin. That would be the first & only time in human history that either the US government or Soros did something right, even if they intended malice. They couldn’t have chosen a more worthy target for their intrigues.

More than 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm exposing corrupt politicians, officials, & celebrities across the globe. What could be the downside to that?

Misogyny & Islamophobia

Bahraini protest (Photo by Hasan Jamali:AP) Apr 6 2016

So much Islamophobic paranoia & fear-mongering is rooted in misogyny, fixated on the veil & the role of women. It masks that with sentimentality & false outrage but then sets out to free them by bombing them & their beloved to smithereens.

That’s one reason why the Arab uprisings, especially in Egypt, Yemen, & Bahrain were met with such ruthless violence by the US, Saudi Arabia, the UK, & other regimes. Because in those countries, women, including thousands wearing veils, played a leading role that exposed the misogyny & rancidity of Islamophobia.

The veil actually proved quite effective in protecting women activists from being identified & targeted by police agents & from attacks with tear gas. Activists around the world adapted some form of it to deal with the ubiquitous tear gas assaults. You can call that cultural appropriation but it’s really something of a salute.

Women tough enough to lead defiance against murderous regimes don’t need media or pro-war feminist commentators dishing out pity & pathos about the veil. Rebellion doesn’t have a dress code. Revolution is a come-as-you-are affair.

This scene yesterday in Bahrain is a woman photographing riot police attacking protesters with tear gas after the funeral procession of Ali Abdulghani, an activist run down by a police vehicle. The loud-mouthed pro-war commentators only exhibit such moxie in words & only if they’re backed by bombers.

Our deepest respect for these women.

(Photo by Hasan Jamali/AP)