“No shit you’re gonna ban us, you dumbwits. (drumroll)”

–Umar Lateef Misgar from Kashmir on India’s internet ban

Pravin Togadia, an extremist nationalist leader in India, called on the Indian government to use carpet bombing to stop the stone throwers in Kashmir. This guy is a medical doctor & a cancer surgeon notorious for hating Muslims & implicated, along with prime minister Modi, in the 2002 pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat state.

It’s unlikely the Indian government hasn’t already considered carpet bombing Kashmir. But deluging a small country with 700,000 soldiers has proven quite effective in making life a living hell.

Against such derangement, Kashmiris cannot be allowed to stand alone. Educate others & build solidarity whilst many Kashmiris are unable to access social media.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo is Dr. Demento Togadia)

It should be no surprise that Assad supports Venezuelan president Maduro & portrays popular opposition to him as US orchestrated–& vice versa, Maduro has long supported Assad’s regime. Telesur news, which is partially owned by Venezuela & headquartered in Caracas, has long promoted Assadist views, even publishing the deranged & scurrilous writings of Tim Anderson, like the one titled “The Omran Deception” vilifying the tiny boy shell-shocked by Russian bombing of Aleppo.

When Vanessa Beeley attended the “Rebuilding Syria” conference in Helsinki last January, the local chapter of Hands Off Venezuela & the ambassador of Venezuela co-sponsored a talk she gave outside the conference.

The political affinities between Syria & Venezuela are not apparent except in the repression of dissent & in the politics of those who uncritically support both Assad & Maduro. Modeling Assad in his military response against revolution, Maduro has announced plans to mobilize the Venezuelan National Bolivarian Militia against hundreds of thousands of protesters. He also plans to increase the Bolivarian Militia (created by Hugo Chavez in 2010) from the current 100,000 armed civilians to 500,000.

As a branch of the Venezuelan National Armed Forces, the Bolivarian Militia is comparable to the US National Guard. Using them against unarmed protesters would militarize public protest, outlaw the right to demonstrate, encourage Venezuelans to shoot protesters down in the street by claiming they are orchestrated by the US Pentagon.

Even if Venezuela was a socialist utopia or was like heaven on earth, a democratic government has no rights whatsoever to take up arms against those who disagree with the ways the country is run.

(Photo of Bolivarian Militia members by Ariana Cubillos/AP)

One of the main reasons Assad propagandists have confused so many is the lack of a coherent elaboration of what the US is doing in Syria. The deliberate obfuscation of the purpose & role the US Pentagon is playing there serves the US, the Assad regime, Russia & all the other countries involved.

The obfuscation weakens opposition by allowing Assadists to use their simple-minded US regime-change scenario. It allows social democratic opponents of Assad to look to the US for assistance in taking Assad down by calling for a No Fly Zone, more US bombing intervention, & for the US to supply arms to anti-Assad militias.

What is left out of both views is the power of the Syrian revolution against Assad’s dictatorship which requires the counter-revolutionary intervention of Russia, US, Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Israel, & other foreign militaries, mercenaries, covert operatives to defeat. All of the regimes involved in the Middle East have long lived with dictatorship. What they cannot tolerate is democracy.

It is not a principled antiwar position nor astute military strategy to call on the US to support the Syrian revolution when it is bombing the hell out of the revolution in Yemen, bankrolling the military junta in Egypt & the monarchy in Bahrain precisely to destroy those revolutions against dictatorship & oppression. Not to mention that it has long bankrolled Israeli colonialism against Palestinians.

For the international antiwar movement that must be rebuilt, the only principled position with any kind of political moxie is to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia. Assad’s regime won’t stand a chance against the revolution without the counter-revolutionary military alliance. If it did, those bombers, special forces, mercenaries, militias wouldn’t be there in the first place.

Photo is two US special forces near Raqqa, Syria. This is not what freedom fighters look like anywhere in the world. This is what occupying armies look like.

(Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/cruelty-and-cowardice-in-kashmir.html?_r=1

This is an important editorial in the NY Times about the Indian occupying army in Kashmir using a young man as a human shield against stone throwers. The Times has previously reported on India’s use of pellet munitions in Kashmir.

Just so we’re clear, the NY Times has never been squeamish about human rights crimes within the US against Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, nor about human rights & war crimes the US & other regimes commit in other countries. Witness Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, & Gaza.

What concerns them is that India’s criminal excesses in Kashmir, well-documented, indisputably documented on social media by Kashmiri activists, will increase political pressure to end the occupation. The US is by no means a neutral observer of India’s crimes in Kashmir but has vested & military interests in the occupation.

Whatever the intent of NY Times editors, we should take this article & run with it to build solidarity with Kashmiris.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

“Revolution needs Courage not #internet & Courage Is made in #Kashmir.”

–Shahid Mehmood Mughal

In its ongoing campaign to let my Facebook friends get to know me, they want me to tell you my life motto which I don’t really have other than the Golden Rule. But I do have a conviction you may find so unedifying that you’ll end up unfriending me. But here it is:

“Never let a sucker punch you; never let anyone run you around the block like a fool. For when you’re old & gray, what will still stick in your craw are the times you couldn’t find the words to tell someone to back off because you are no one’s fool & deserve respect.”

Often people are better at standing up for others than for themselves. Fight for your own dignity like you fight for others because tolerating disrespect eats the soul. Advice almost every senior woman would give you

Homeless in Manila, Philippines: Manila has the highest population of homeless people in the world with over 3 million having no kind of shelter. There are 4 million others living in makeshift slums now under scorched earth siege by the government & neoliberal investors who want the slums cleared & the residents forced to relocate to the other side of hell.

That is what Duterte’s so-called drug war is all about. For years, the Philippine government has used arson, forcible eviction & bulldozing slums to remove residents in order to build upscale shopping malls, resorts, golf courses for the world’s elite. Trump Towers in Manila is part of that schema which means Trump, Inc. has a vested political interest in slum clearance.

To facilitate the process of slum clearance & overcome resident’s aggressive resistance, Duterte is enforcing a death squad war on the poor, a bounty war where vigilantes & police are offered rewards for every corpse they bring in like it was trash removal rather than extrajudicial executions of the poor. That means Trump has a vested interest in the death squad war on the poor.

Since Duterte became president on June 30th, 2016, over 9,000 men, women, & teenagers have been shot down in cold blood on the streets for suspicion as a drug user or small-time peddler. The government officials, bankers, big-time operators moving the drugs from China & Myanmar into the Philippines are making plans to cash in on those upscale malls & resorts & looking forward to doing nine rounds on the swanky new golf courses.

The homeless man & woman here live inside concrete drainage pipes which serve not only as sleeping quarters but as defense against vigilante hit men.

Our fullest solidarity with Filipino human rights activists & organizations standing against Duterte’s war on the poor. It should come as no surprise that Assad supporters are among Duterte’s strongest supporters.

(Photo by Ezra Acayan/Barcroft Images)

Reposting this from December 2016 when Kashmiris had already sustained over 6 months of military siege by Indian troops, in particular bombardment by pellet munitions, & never bent the knee to occupation. Still they publicly stood in solidarity with the oppressed around the world:
****
Kashmiri medical students in solidarity with the Syrian revolution, Yemen, the Rohingya, Central Africa:

Sometimes the weight of violence & militarism in the world overwhelms & seems so daunting because there is not yet a powerful enough international counterforce & because the old antiwar movement has been hijacked by propagandists & become fractured by war-mongering & Muslim-hating currents.

Then a group of students in occupied Kashmir shows the way & we know where the forces of the new antiwar & solidarity movements will emerge. They renew our energy & confidence that humanity will fulfill its historic mission to create a world suitable for human beings led by the most oppressed who have been steeled in action by their own struggles against occupation & colonialism.

Long live Palestinian & Kashmiri Intifada.

(Photos from Rising Kashmir)