Rania Khalek might want to give up writing propaganda for Assad. After she wondered on Twitter if Syrian soldiers poisoned her food when she, Beeley & Bartlett were traveling to west Aleppo, she’s persona non grata in those circles. Beeley & Bartlett were incensed at the imputation against their beloved Syrian Army & tweeted their objections in no uncertain terms.

Then in an article claiming “Western Media cheers Al Qaeda,” Khalek wrote: “The Syrian government—a dictatorship known for imprisoning, torturing & disappearing dissidents—is easy to vilify. And over the last five years of Syria’s civil war, it has committed its share of atrocities. But there is more than one side to every story.” What exactly is the other side to “a dictatorship known for imprisoning, torturing & disappearing dissidents” & which commits atrocities? Has Khalek found a progressive up side to atrocities?

Her latest piece titled “How Most of the US Left Failed Syria” doesn’t indicate exactly who she is reproaching for not agreeing with her take on that “other side” to atrocities. There is no US left & hasn’t been for a few decades. Is she referring to Global Research readers who are on the cutting edge of right-wing nutty?

Alas poor Rania. Assad shouldn’t have had her at hello.

This is my article on the Trump election & rebuilding international solidarity in the journal Pakistan Today. I’m not real crazy about long-winded writing & didn’t realize it was too long. Brevity is a virtue in political writing but I don’t have a word counter so misestimated by ten feet of words.

Next I’ll be writing a piece for them on Kashmir & one on the Rohingya struggle. It isn’t that Kashmiri & Rohingya voices aren’t more authoritative & compelling but that US activists must play a role in broadening international solidarity because anti-Muslim war-mongering originates in the US government.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/01/28/what-was-destroyed-must-be-rebuilt/

This is the list of seven Muslim-majority countries whose citizens Trump banned by Executive Order from entering the US: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, & Iran. The problem with the ban is that it only goes one way. The citizens of those countries can’t keep the US out. The US, which has has massive military & covert operations in six of the banned countries & is eyeballing Iran, has created hundreds of thousands of war refugees.

We don’t have to stand for this Executive Order which comes down like a hammer on hundreds of thousands of war refugees stranded all over the globe. Assad supporters have been on a wrecking operation & have jeopardized refugees with their talk of head-chopping terrorists & have reduced the antiwar movement to a shell & a mockery of international solidarity. It’s time to rebuild the international antiwar movement to demand the US & all foreign military operations immediately & unconditionally withdraw from wherever they are & to demand the borders be opened & sanctuary given to refugees from wherever they come.

The US antiwar movement is so compromised by association with the Hands Off Syria Coalition that the regeneration of antiwar solidarity may not develop here timely enough to address this crisis–even though activists in the countries responsible for wars have a duty to oppose them without bending an inch to Islamophobic war-mongering.

The anti-Vietnam War movement involved millions on every continent in coordinated actions; Palestinian solidarity against Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2014 involved over a million all over the world; the Women’s Marches involved millions on every continent. If we are to drive back the right-wing onslaught escalated by the Trump regime, it will take all that, not in episodic protest but in sustained campaigns to end these monstrous wars & the Muslim-hating that justifies them.

The countries & activists that lead the regeneration of antiwar solidarity will speak in a chorus of languages demanding “No US wars!”

This brilliant Swiftian piece by Musab Iqbal re-posted in solidarity with the Syrian revolution:

The “Revolutionary” manifesto of 21st-century Hypocrites

– Russian intervention is different from US/Nato intervention

– Russia has no imperial/colonial ambition (ever) unlike US and allies

– Iran-backed militias are not like US/Saudi-backed militias. Former unlike latter is busy saving human lives with great empathy and kindness

– Assad is the most ideal democrat and any criticism of him and his power is sinful

– Assad army never shot or killed anyone, in fact Hama massacre never happened, there is no prison and torture center in Syria

– Syrian Army is personally trained by Gandhiji

– The world is made of binary. If you are not with us (Russia-Syria-Iran) then you are with them (ISIS-Al Qaeda- USA- Saudi etc)

– Celebrating death and torture is the most merciful and dignified revolutionary act

– Iran is defending Secularism and Democracy in Syria like it is doing in its own country

– Everyone is lying except PressTV, RT and journalists close to Assad regime

– Don’t criticize Syrian regime if you have not criticized all the violence in the world starting from Habeel and Qabeel (Adam’s son killing the other son)

– There is/was never political opposition in Syria, there were terrorists and there are terrorists.

A Pakistani journal is publishing an article of mine about the Trump election. I’m thinking I need an attitude & some affectations to go with authorship. I’ll be reviewing videos of famous authors to see which persona suits me best: eccentric with peculiar twitches? ponderous & somewhat constipated? over-the-top dramatic & slightly scatterbrained? dripping with sincerity & something of a bore?

Any other ideas? I have to do this right in case Jimmy Fallon wants to interview me.

PS: Between you & me, I’m just delighted. But giddy is not the persona I would like to project.

Assad supporters, led by their Australian hatchet-man Tim Anderson, are on a rampage against Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American who is director of the NY Arab American Association. Their issue with her is of course her support for the Syrian revolution. With unbridled animosity, vindictiveness, & dishonesty, they are out to defame & take her down. My political differences with her are very sharp indeed but it is unimaginable to treat someone I disagree with in such an aggressive manner. Aggression is saved for the likes of Henry Kissinger & even with him, animosity is tempered & lying is not allowable.

They’re also out to get Amnesty International now. They’ve already denounced Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, & all non-Russian & non-Assadist media. Those organizations are hardly perfect but the work they do is invaluable. The medical personnel of MSF/Doctors Without Borders are on the front lines everywhere, including in bombing zones. And Assadists vilify them as lying-assed criminals?

In their hermetically-sealed universe, hell-bent on saving Assad’s ass, there is no one left to trust but Global Research, Russian media, Tim Anderson, Bartlett & Beeley, that smarmy vicar from England, Tulsi Gabbard, & a few other venal propagandists. What exactly is the attraction of such politics?

PS: And by the way, we stand with Linda Sarsour. As well we stand with human rights groups who play an important role, even if they have political weaknesses.

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967

When the offensive against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq began mid-October 2016, the US Pentagon estimated there were between 3,000 & 5,000 ISIS fighters in the city. Mosul Eye, an anti-ISIS blogger from Mosul, estimated nearly double the number of ISIS fighters & claimed half were teenagers who were not trained.

Media has long reported on ISIS recruitment, conscription, & use of child soldiers. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claims ISIS uses them as fighters, suicide bombers, snipers, blood donors & that they are instructed in beheading or shooting captives.

Two weeks after the October 2016 offensive began, the SOHR reported that of the 450 ISIS fighters killed till then, 300 were children. There are no available figures on the number of ISIS fighters killed in Mosul after October 30th, including the number of children fighters. The use of child soldiers is a war crime. So if anywhere close to a half of ISIS fighters in Mosul are children—or even if only a third or fourth are children—then the conduct of war should be altered to protect them as traumatized victims & not treat them as enemy combatants.

By mid-November, hospitals near Mosul were reporting up to a dozen kids a day coming for emergency treatment of gunshot wounds, burns, mutilations, shrapnel injuries. Some were caught in crossfire, some as they fled the fighting, & some may have been ISIS fighters.

The number of overall civilian deaths & injuries have not been reported since early November but were then nearly a thousand killed in crossfire & 1,000 injured. Reports of the number of civilians who have fled are all over the place but the most recent is nearly 161,000, according to the International Organization for Migration.

This 17-year-old was detained by Iraqi soldiers in Mosul as a suspected ISIS fighter. They brought him blindfolded (considered a war crime) before an intelligence investigator who asked him “How long were you with Daesh (ISIS)? The boy “submissively” replied “Twenty days, sir.” It isn’t reported whether they released or jailed him but the intelligence officer said he appeared harmless though suspected he could pose “a latent threat after Islamic State’s days of ruling over vast swathes of territory come to an end.” What does that mean? That young kids who are bullied by soldiers & stuck in the middle of bombing & urban warfare develop political antipathies that lead them to extremist politics?

Such is the character of emancipation US-style.

US out of Iraq & Syria.

(Photo by Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)

Tulsi Gabbard went to Syria on a fact-finding tour & all we got was a lousy “I love Assad” tee-shirt. We never expected other from a notorious admirer of Modi, General Sisi, & Assad who thinks violent, extremist militias in Syria derive from Islamic theology.

She traveled in Syria accompanied by two members of the Syrian Social Nationalist party (SSNP) whose armed militias have been fighting side by side with the Syrian army against the popular revolution for nearly six years. It’s reported that SSNP militias take over security in many towns after Assad forces have expelled the rebels.

On her return, Gabbard reported that her tour & audience with Assad confirmed her Islamophobia: “Peaceful protests against the government that began in 2011 were quickly overtaken by Wahhabi jihadist groups like al-Qaeda (al-Nusra) who were funded & supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, the United States, & others. They exploited the peaceful protesters, occupied their communities, & killed & tortured Syrians who would not cooperate with them in their fight to overthrow the government.”

It’s a pity the erstwhile antiwar activists & socialists in the Hands Off Syria Coalition look to Muslim-hating Tulsi Gabbard to legitimize their political degeneration.

If you want to be politically au courant these days & still remain shallow you have to learn the lingo, especially the accusatory terms. Denunciation is the lion’s share of fashionable politics.

To be really cool but not give away the shallow depths of your understanding, these terms are de rigueur: neocons, neolibs, alt-right, alt-left, Deep State, color revolution. Most people don’t have a clue what they mean which is precisely the charm of using them. Nobody wants to look stupid by asking what the hell they mean.

Deep State has come into its own since Glenn Greenwald & Global Research use it now to claim the Deep State, defined as the CIA, defense industry, & corporations, is plotting to destabilize Trump’s presidency. Global Research, always on the cutting edge of nutty, goes further in suggesting that protests against Trump are a color revolution, meaning orchestrated by the CIA & Soros. Presumably the color of this one is pink, the motif of the Women’s Marches in the US.

The term Deep State originated in the 1990s to describe a clandestine network within the Turkish political system that conspires against popular democracy. It includes the military, judiciary, intelligence agencies, & operates mafia-style in collaboration with the CIA. The concept seems to be used most by foreign journalists with an Islamophobic distrust of Turks justified by libertarian nihilism & little understanding of how governments administer capitalism.

There’s no confusion why Global Research uses the term. It’s a right-wing libertarian cesspool which promotes the “New World Order” scenario of David Icke & Eva Bartlett that reptilian Jewish bankers called the Illuminati rule & are moving the world toward fascism. It isn’t that libertarians don’t see the class character of society but that they hold working people in contempt. To them, all substantive change comes from the nefarious forces of the Deep State & Illuminati.

Our man Greenwald may not advocate that reptilian anti-Semitic crap but he has zilch understanding of how capitalism & government relate to each other–a blind spot he has demonstrated more than once, especially in his campaign for Chuck Hagel as the lesser of evil US Secretary of Defense. Since when do progressives get involved in the selection of who administers US wars?

Libertarians & political fashionistas parrot the term Deep State because it appeals to their nihilistic suspicions that everything is fake & manipulated & it confirms their elitist, anti-Semitic prejudices that clandestine agencies & reptilian Jewish bankers run the world. When millions of working people enter the stage of history, they scorn them as manipulated by financiers & undercover operatives. To their minds, all revolutions & mass protests–from the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, & Bahrain to the Women’s Marches–are orchestrated by the CIA & Soros.

Who can reason with such madness? It’s political martyrdom to try.