The Amnesty International report published today titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings & Extermination At Saydnaya Prison, Syria” is 48 pages describing unspeakable tortures Syrian dissidents are being subjected to in Assad’s gulag, including the hanging of up to 13,000 dissidents & revolutionists between 2011 & 2015.

This damning exposé explains the pernicious campaign being waged by Assad’s paid coterie of propagandists denouncing Amnesty International as deceitful & biased against Assad. They were preparing their followers not to even read the report.

Amnesty is not a paragon of political virtue; there is often reason to excoriate their judgements including particularly its report on Gaza after the 2014 Israeli carpet bombing offensive. But this report exhibits investigative rigor which Assadists will attempt to discredit. There is a way for the Assad regime to rebut the conclusions of this investigation & that is to comply with Amnesty’s call for allowing independent human rights monitors unrestricted access to Saydnaya & other Syrian prisons.

Do those who support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians to defend Assad’s national sovereignty (i.e., dictatorial rule) believe these monstrous crimes are politically defensible by anyone other than fascists?

One can download the report from this site in either English or Arabic:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/5415/2017/en/

(Before & after photos of detainee at Saydnaya Prison)

(Both photos  from Amnesty)

Amnesty International has published “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings & Extermination At Saydnaya Prison, Syria,” a gruesome 48 page account of all form of torture & of up to 13,000 hangings of Assad’s political opponents in one of his military prisons.

The contrast of investigative rigor shown in Amnesty International’s report to the pathetic sycophancy of the US Peace Council delegation to Syria in July 2016 facilitated by paid Assad propagandists Beeley & Bartlett could not be more damning of the latter. The delegates who on their return spoke at the UN under the aegis of the Syrian ambassador make you cringe at their childlike credulity & willingness to believe whoever Assad’s propagandists stuck in front of them, including mostly government officials, businessmen, industrialists, & the Syrian Eastern Bunny. They swallowed every word they were told & never inquired about Assad’s gulag.

The delegates in this photo fawning during their audience with Assad are from left to right: Henry Lowendorf, Madelyn Hoffman, Judith Bello, Bashar Assad, Vanessa Beeley, Donna Nassor, & two unidentified jamokes. The delegation included Joe Jamison & Gerry Condon, neither of whom looks like these two guys.

If you can stomach listening to 45 minutes of political drivel, this video is members of the delegation reporting their findings at the UN on their return from Syria. Even ten minutes will serve to expose their shameful lack of judgment & investigative rigor in contrast to the Amnesty International report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc-RmAVK8Pg

Yesterday a friend & I talked about why they would allow Trump to take office after losing the popular vote, showing himself to be a vulgarian pig, & being financially compromised, maybe criminally implicated, in business dealings in several countries. They could have stopped it any number of ways.

Surely they were planning an abrupt rightward shift in US politics but he seems to be bungling even that & challenging institutions of capitalist rule along the way, like the judiciary. Clinton’s policies wouldn’t have been different but she was in the tradition of politicians promising the sky & delivering the opposite & wouldn’t have been so disruptive. With that coterie of vicious halfwits & racists surrounding him, he’s making the US presidency look like amateur hour at a maximum security facility for the criminally deranged.

Trump got a resounding welcome by special forces operatives at the US Special Operations Command yesterday. At least he’s still welcome among psycho killers who were no-show at the Bowling Green Massacre but have been involved in every other US treachery of the past 65 years.

If Trump refuses to release his tax returns how will they know he severed financial relationships in other countries that are conflicts of interest with being president? The details of Trump’s overseas business deals are secret & were not reported in his campaign financial filings with the Federal Election Commission. Why isn’t an oversight commission demanding access to that information? Is there an oversight commission?

How do we know his business dealings are legal in those countries? Most of his dealings are with international financiers & real estate developers who in almost every country are tied to illegal & criminal activities. What kind of money is he getting under the table?

In an interview he gave about his 2013 trip to Moscow he told an interviewer: “I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs & generals, & top of the government people. I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, & the relationship was extraordinary.” Russia isn’t called gangster capitalism for nothing–even in comparison to US gangster capitalism–so that oversight commission should find out what’s in the “further” secret part of that relationship.

What do the Russians have on Trump, by which we do not mean prurient matters? What kind of deals & what are the terms of those deals that Putin thinks will serve as blackmail? If all this secrecy does not require special congressional oversight or constitute grounds for impeachment, then what does?

Duterte appointed Trump’s business partner Jose E. B. Antonio as special Philippine envoy to the US. That business partner is tied to slum evictions & arsons for purpose of privatization & to Duterte’s death squads. Duterte operates like J. Edgar Hoover so what does Duterte have on Trump other than the ability to harm or advance Trump’s business interests?

A special Congressional investigative committee must be appointed to examine all of Trump’s business dealings in other countries & to sever all of them–which would require his resignation & likely prosecution. Not because his business dealings jeopardize the security of the US (US Pentagon dealings overseas already do that) nor to salvage the integrity of the presidency (which was already shot to hell before his presidency & now is in the toilet) but because the American people & people in those countries where he has deals have a right to know what kind of criminalities Trump is engaged in at our expense.

Aamir Nazir Lattoo, a 23 year old graduate student at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in India, was martyred by Indian Occupational Forces on July 12, 2016 while home on vacation. His family took him to the local hospital in Bijbehara where the doctors administered first aid & called an ambulance to take him to Srinagar.

His father Nazir Latoo reports that as the ambulance was about to leave occupying forces attacked & vandalized it, beat the driver forcing him to flee, assaulted family members & attendants of another injured person, tore out the IV tubes on Aamir’s arms, & detained the ambulance which delayed emergency medical care in Srinagar. Unable to receive critical care in time, he died the next day.
Aamir Nazir was known as passionate about Kashmiri freedom & thousands participated in his funeral prayers.

Kashmiri students at AMU, in an assertion of Kashmiri self-determination, are honoring Aamir by organizing an annual football tournament in his name. They said: “The tournament is aimed at reliving every single memory that we have of our beloved brother, Aamir Nazir. This event, to be played every year insha’allah, would keep reminding us of the cause that our martyrs like Aamir have laid their life for.”

Please like & share the Aamir Memorial Football Tournament page as an act of solidarity & in tribute to his life.

https://www.facebook.com/AMFT2016/?pnref=story

The Greater Kashmir posted this article about the gruesome assault on the ambulance:

http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/kashmir/story/229292.html

(Photo of Aamir Nazir)