http://www.firstpost.com/long-reads/muslim-women-do-not-need-saving-3392516.html

This is a very creative & cogent discussion about the misogyny & politics of Islamophobia. It’s long but insightful & well worth the read.

It’s a remarkable work actually & extremely valuable to activists for understanding & explaining the complexities & dynamics of Islamophobia which now reigns supreme as the ideological basis of war, genocide, & hate-mongering. Hating on Muslims, especially on Muslim women, portraying Islam as hateful & Muslims as potential terrorists is the battle cry of reactionary politics & must be politically defeated. This article will contribute to that struggle.

The authors are Afrin Firdaus Idris & Heba Ahmad.

Am still seeing posts lauding the writer Alice Walker for supporting the Palestinian struggle. Since she publicly associates & defends her commitment to the worldview of David Icke, she should not be regarded as an ally but as persona non grata.

Icke believes reptilian Jewish bankers run the world. His is the obscurantist rendition of fascist ideology & in its essence does not differ from Adolph Hitler, David Duke, or the Hands Off Syria Coalition led by Eva Bartlett.

It was some years ago I was talking on the phone to a guy who was gaga for Hugo Chavez. Head over heels gaga. Being a name-dropper as well as a windbag, he told me he couldn’t talk at me long because Hugo Chavez was on the other line for a consultation.

Our man is now a honcho in the Hands Off Syria Coalition. Probably taking calls from Assad.

There’s no moral to the story. And no purpose. I just had to get it off my chest. Kind of like a revenge thing.

When I want to get my hate on I watch “Undercover Boss.” Those nimrod bosses are so damn patronizing to their workers who all seem to know they’re being played. My hate exhausts itself fast but it’s so much better than watching Fox News or MSNBC.

So for years all we hear about India is information technology hotspot of the universe. Then Modi’s regime imposes a social media ban on Kashmir & they’re outwitted by kids on their smartphones.

“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.