No more powerful call for international solidarity:
“Some nights I wonder how will I meet my death.
Then I remember I am a Kashmiri, & death will come to me as a bullet.”
– Farah Bashir
(Meme from FB wall Rebel Politik by Arun, by V Arun Kumar, a cartoonist, illustrator, photographer in New Delhi, India)
Today my little bird was killed, I got a speeding ticket, & I had a punch-out with an Islamophobic feminist who claimed Islam was all about beheading women. These are the puny-assed problems of retirement. You read the news, you feel like a fool for complaining.
For many years I only rescued birds, mainly cockatiels & parakeets, & considered it wrong to also take in dogs or cats that could threaten the safety of the birds. Birds are all traumatized when I get them & allowing free flight allows them a way to regain their sense of power. They can come to me when they are ready & feel safe. Some never do.
But this area has a monumental problem with abandoned dogs & cats–like nothing I’ve ever seen. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t see several dogs running the streets–some lost, but mostly abandoned. So it just sort of happened that I began bringing home stray dogs. So many now, I’ve lost count. Getting them loving families is the hard part & I can’t let them go till I know they’ll be safe since I’ve had experiences in the past giving birds & dogs to reckless people
There are lots of small rescue groups here & many people picking up strays & caring for them, but until just now there wasn’t a no-kill shelter & the biggest shelter reported it euthanized 70,000 dogs a year. That’s the scale of the problem.
Having dogs with birds flying about presented problems, not so much when I was home & could monitor things but when I had to leave. My resolution of the problem was putting the birds in one room where the dogs couldn’t enter. But when I left to go out tonight, two cockatiels resisted going into the room & I let them be since they usually stay far away from the dogs.
When I arrived home after a few hours, the entire house was strewn with bird feathers & my little Mango, who must have put up quite a fight, was dead. There is always immense guilt when an animal in your care is hurt, especially in such a horrific way. We’re supposed to be ever-vigilant to their safety. Guilt sure doesn’t make grieving easier.
My problem is that I rescue dogs but have no idea how to train them so I put on my mad face & put them all outside. When they came back in I showed them Mango & gave them a harsh scolding but what do they understand? I thought maybe I should put on a display of grief so they would get it. They’re not stupid animals but tearing apart little creatures is part of their nature. They probably played with Mango after they killed her.
I’ve been rescuing dogs for seven years & only lost one other wee parakeet who was disabled & couldn’t fly. So I probably won’t stop picking up strays but I will never make exceptions to my safety measures again.
May sweet little Mango RIP.
Please take a moment to like & share this Facebook wall to render public support to Kashmiri activists in their struggle against the brutal occupation. Their role on social media is helping break the news blackout which prevailed for decades. Like Palestinians against Israel for too long, Kashmiris stood alone. It’s time for the big battalions of international solidarity to stand with them to end the human rights crimes.
https://www.facebook.com/Human-Rights-Violations-in-Jammu…/…
Khurram Parvez from the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), which is on the legal team for the Handwara teenage girl, is reporting that she & her family were abducted by police in late evening & taken to an undisclosed location. The JKCCS is of course concerned about their physical & psychological well being.
Rather than stand by in horror, we can spread this petition far & wide in her defense so that the Indian government knows it is being watched & cannot act with impunity.
Does anyone else think that if Slavoj Zizek were orange & had yellow hair he could be Donald Drumpf’s twin? They rant the same malarkey & both use deranged hand gestures. Separated at birth?
Exhibit A in the court of public opinion to prove Slavoj Zizek is an ass, a racist, & a xenophobe. It feels so good to say that out loud whilst surrounded by FB study groups of pretentious intellectuals doing exegeses of his discourses & treatises. They’re probably all readers of Jacobin.
His most profound work was comparative analysis of toilets where he apparently did most of his best work. One hopes that after so many of these malignant rants against refugees the fancy-schmanzy crowd will finally grasp his intellectual insipidity & dump him–so to speak.
CBS announced more US troops to Iraq (no mention of how many mercenaries are deployed)–not to look for fictitious weapons of mass destruction this time but to fight ISIS, created by the US to perpetuate occupation. The Pentagon has put the people of Iraq through hell & made the country a killing field. But of course the president & generals consider it “worth it” (in the words of Madeleine Albright) to achieve US objectives.
First comes the grief at what our government does in our name. Then comes the fury.
The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement.