KKK guy David Duke endorses Tulsi Gabbard for her trip to Syria & endorsement of Assad. Of course Beeley & Bartlett, Assad’s posse of paid propagandists & their followers also enthusiastically do. Global Research, the very font of crazy-assed libertarianism is jubilant. They all expect to launch the apocalyptic battles against the Illuminati from Syria after Muslims are driven out.

Now Max Blumenthal & Rania Khalek have joined the chorus of trolls despite Gabbard’s Muslim-hating, ardent support for apartheid Israel, support for caste society in India, & support for military dictatorship in Egypt.

Is there a difference between a cesspool & the Hands Off Syria Coalition?

Reports are circulating that Assad is bedridden or may have died. How will they know for sure when he’s croaked? Poke him with a cattle prod?

Apparently this isn’t the first time some have let their wishful thinking get away with them. He’s been rumored dead before. Whether he’s alive or dead only matters if it will weaken his regime & strengthen the revolution against him.

One thing we do know: nearly half-a-million Syrians have died & several millions are refugees. Whenever he croaks the requiems will be a hallelujah chorus.

Assad expressed great umbrage to Syrian-state media that Russian insiders blabbed about his exhaustion from six years of carpet bombing civilians. On the contrary. That twitch in his left eye has nothing to do with with shot nerves. His capacity for barbarity & mass murder of revolutionists is undiminished.

Vanessa Beeley confirms this in an article chastising those who demonize Assad. She believes Assad is the reincarnation of Hugo Chavez dressed in Armani & that he’s trained the Syrian Army in the ethos of Gandhi. She prefers to demonize baby Omran who makes bombing civilians a problematic for propagandists to explain. Assad however laughed at the suggestion that bombing children troubled him. He is a dictator after all.

The denunciations & hating on liberals seems inexhaustible. But mostly irrational. Perhaps those who make such vituperations the essence of their politics could tell us how many times they marched against Obama’s wars? If ever.

Two oil tankers collided early Saturday morning outside Kamarajar Port (formerly named Ennore Port) near Chennai, India. Port officials called it a minor accident, announced there was no damage to the environment, & said the movement of ships was not affected.

Coast Guard officials in Chennai said they were assessing the situation but “Kamarajar Port has the wherewithal to arrest the spill, which is a minor one” with a containment boom (a floating barrier used to contain oil spills).

Maybe the Coast Guard & port officials didn’t notice the thin film of oil for two nautical miles along coast. Possible? Because local residents reported thick black oil along the beach & turtles washing ashore dead; fishermen were unable to maneuver their boats through the oil deposits.

It’s a red alert that Kamarajar Port is the first privatized port in India under the Modi government’s neoliberal economic policies to move port management of all Indian ports from state-owned to a corporate, landlord model.

This photo of a pollution response officer collecting samples of the oil spill near Kamarajar Port documents that this was not a minor spill. And likely not the last.

(Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images)

This Iraqi woman fled the military offensive in Mosul of 110,000 Iraqi & US-coalition forces against 5,000 ISIS fighters, half of them thought to be child soldiers.

When the US Pentagon & Assadists speak of “liberating” by carpet bombing, this refugee camp is what it looks like. Other than the mountains of cement rubble.

US out of Iraq & Syria. Russia & Iran out of Syria. No foreign military intervention.

(Photo by Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

Trump’s ban on Muslims & his order to finish the wall on the Mexican border are a continuum with European Union policy toward refugees where thousands are stranded in subzero temperatures, thousands drown in the Mediterranean, & thousands are deported back to war zones.

What is also a continuum is Syrian, Russian, Iranian, & US responsibility for creating millions of war refugees in the first place. When protesting against the Muslim ban we should include placards denouncing US military intervention in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia along with protesting Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.

That is not to minimize one iota the criminal role of US military intervention but to also condemn Assad & Putin for the carpet bombing of civilians in Syria.

Canadian officials are investigating the motives behind the attack on the Quebec mosque where 6 people were killed, 8 were injured, & 39 others were traumatized.

Can Trump be prosecuted for inciting terrorism against Muslims?

One hopes those who disdained the Women’s Marches for marching against Trump’s policies when they didn’t march against Obama will at least recognize the monumental importance of tens of thousands in 30 US cities protesting at airports against Trump’s Muslim ban. Not only are the demonstrations large, but they are growing. That is what it will take to reverse the executive order.

Refugee rights (today all immigrants are refugees) are an imperative political battle for our generation. Facing down racism & xenophobia with battalions of human solidarity, refusing to be manipulated by hatred of Muslims or Mexicans will affect not just asylum rights but the conduct of wars that force millions to flee their homes.

Open the borders. Refugees & undocumented immigrants welcome here.

Photo is protest at Dulles airport in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Mike Theiler/Reuters)