Whither goest Tariq Ali?

Last week our man posted an article from World News Daily Report titled “Woman Runs Over Her Husband With An SUV After Learning He Voted For Trump.” Other notable headlines in World News Daily include “Did a KGB Agent Confirm That the Sex Pistols Were Backed by the USSR to Destabilize the West?”; “Babysitter Transported to Hospital After Inserting a Baby in Her Vagina?”; “Stuck 71 Hours in an Elevator, Man Kills & Eats his Wife to Survive?”

Previously Ali has posted Eva Bartlett, an editor for David Icke who believes reptilian Jewish bankers run the world; an Islamophobic blog about Muslims slave trading in Libya; & today an article from Rania Khalek titled “Ignored By Western Media, Syrians Describe the Nightmare the Armed Opposition Brought Them” which is her usual shoddy scholarship & is based on a conversation she had in west Aleppo while embedded up the ass of the Syrian army & accompanied by Bartlett, Beeley, & an Assad official.

Again, whither goest Tariq Ali? How compromised will he allow himself to be? Or does he just not recognize the degeneration?

Chomsky, Tariq Ali, & Ajamu Baraka are among those who don’t get the importance of Trump’s associations with Russia & scoff at the investigation. Chomsky called it all “a joke” & defended Trump’s associations as diplomatic rapprochement & attempts to end US interference with Russia. Chomsky didn’t explain how lying & obstruction of justice fit into that scenario.

The US has been interfering with Russia since the revolution in 1917. There is an entire genre of literature based on spying between the US, Russia, & Eastern Europe & an industry based on Radio Free Europe. Of course, Russia interfered in the US elections in retaliation. That’s how competitive capitalist countries relate to each other & always have.

Electoral meddling is how politicians frame the issue but that is not what’s at stake for working people. What is at issue is Trump’s maneuverings with Russia to influence American politics in the same way & as condemnable as the Clintons used their foundation to peddle influence.

It isn’t about unearthing dirt on Trump’s sexual habits. No one has the stomach for that. It’s about unraveling & exposing the corruption in US politics & Trump’s probably illegal activities related to Russia that harm both Russian & American working people. Once the financial entanglements between Trump & Russia are exposed, we can understand the entanglements he has with other countries like India, the Philippines, Ireland, Scotland, & elsewhere that make him unsuitable to be president & expose the role of money in US electoral politics.

Whatever the motivations for this investigation to the Democratic Party, it serves democracy to know how corrupt electoral politics are & explains why the US is run by millionaires in their interests & not in ours.

Chelsea Manning has been released from prison. A sane act in an insane world.

Nakba Day 2017 near Ramallah & the Israeli settlement of Beit El:
The Palestinian protester on the ground was injured in what media calls a “clash” with Israeli troops which is when Israeli soldiers attack unarmed protesters to inflict maximum harm. That is not a clash but an occupation.

As admirable & tough as these young protesters are, it is an abomination that their lives are stolen from them & their dreams unrealized because they have to fight for their very existence against occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing.

Long live Palestinian Intifada. Honor the economic boycott of Israel (BDS) & buy nothing with barcode beginning 729.

(Photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank & Gaza took to the streets on Monday to commemorate Nakba Day waving flags, holding keys symbolizing the right of return to their homeland, & chanting support for 1,600 Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike.

The Israeli occupying army was on high alert with rubber-coated steel bullets & tear gas against unarmed, peaceful protesters. According to emergency workers, at least 13 Palestinians were injured by the rubber bullets

Many of the protesters were very young schoolchildren, some were elderly. These young schoolgirls near Bethlehem are running for cover from tear gas, which is how Israel commemorates resistance to occupation.

Palestinian president ad infinitum Mahmoud Abbas didn’t dare show his face at Nakba Day since he has no place in Intifada & identifies more with the occupation. Instead he spent the day currying favor from Modi in India.

Long live Palestinian Intifada. End the occupation. Self-determination for Palestinians.

(Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Got this photo from the Facebook wall of Human Rights Violations in Kashmir. Don’t know how old it is. Could be last week, last year, tens years ago. It’s timeless.

This is what the struggle in Kashmir is all about: the kids. They want their children to know a freedom they have never known under colonialism & occupation.

That’s why international solidarity matters. Because like Palestinians & Rohingya, they stood alone for decades, vilified as terrorists. Their victory would change the balance of power in the world to the advantage of the oppressed around the world & shows the rest of us how to stand against tyranny even when it seems you are alone.

Long live Kashmiri Intifada that the children will know freedom at last.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

PS: Aren’t the children absolutely darling!?

It’s so yesterday to denounce “the left” when the term has been stripped to the bone of any meaning. Media defines the Clintons as the left; she herself claims she’s part of the “resistance.” Pro-Assad libertarians & screwballs call themselves the left, some even the revolutionary left, & denounce protesters against Trump & even the Muslim ban as liberals who they hate on with a vengeance that’s demented.

Anti-Assad social democrats & anarchists denounce the left, often with an axe to grind which is quite unseemly & irrational in polemics, but they group everybody together including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Ajamu Baraka (all of whom support Democrats) with lost souls like Cindy Sheehan & Jeff Mackler, professional Assad propagandists like Bartlett & Beeley, fascist fellow travelers like Tim Anderson, & know-nothing, social climbing honoraria hounds like Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Vijay Prashad, & Rania Khalek.

How useful a term is “the left” when it has no meaning, when it’s falsely used by those who claim it & by those who denounce it? Most Assad supporters are rightwing libertarians & do not distinguish themselves in politics from Ron Paul or David Icke, especially in hating on immigrants, Muslims, & Jews, even though they mask it behind denunciations & caricatures like “Wahhabi/Salafi jihadis” & “Israhell anti-Zionism”. Many call themselves socialists & they are–of the Stalinist or National Socialist type.

Assad’s opponents don’t serve an understanding of the dynamics involved in Assadism by lashing out indiscriminately at “the left.” So much better to elaborate the political forces operating, the pressures bearing down that have allowed rightwing libertarianism to take center stage in politics & destroy resistance to war, co-opt Palestinian solidarity for their purposes, & make a mockery of “the left.” Whatever “the left” is.