CBS morning news is going all high & mighty about bad celebrity jokes at Trump’s expense. Trump: the creep who calls Mexicans rapists & criminals, Muslims terrorists, ridicules those with disability, & talks about women in porno terms.

In July I have an article coming out in Kashmir Mirage about stone pelters which includes both Kashmiri & Palestinian youth. Israel has actually criminalized it & has draconian punishment for youth who engage in it. In both Palestine & Kashmir, they are often just shot down by the occupying armies.

At first I feared the article might be rejected as a defense of hooliganism or anarchy which is ironic since in organizing protests I detest anarchistic grandstanding & vandalism. Protesting in serious business & I disdain treating protest as a chance to express infantile impulses like it was temper tantrum time & breaking windows or provoking cops are part of the deal. But stone pelting is not vandalism so much as a form of civilian defense guards because that is how they function.

Anyway, Kashmiris are way ahead of me on this issue & the article will be coming out in the July issue. I’m honored more than I can say.

Hopefully those who support the occupation of Kashmir will notice the outpouring of condolences by Kashmiris for the family of the officer who was beaten to death but who do not also make any concessions to the occupation.

Instead of joining the rabid chorus led by the Indian army & media about a lynching which apparently never took place, perhaps they can empathize with Kashmiris who have seen their leaders actually hung, their children killed, disabled & disfigured by pellets, their beloved disappeared, raped, tortured, incarcerated, murdered.

This is not to justify the crime but to put it in perspective. Kashmiris are human beings too. Human beings who want freedom.

On the killing of 22-year-old Tawseef Ahmad Wani by occupying forces who justified his murder by calling him a “chronic stone pelter.”

“A CHRONIC stone pelter!!! Is this a newly defined crime where the penalty is MURDER?”

–Sheila Bryce

Grieving death of four young Kashmiris

Grieving Kashmiri girls (Basit Zargar) June 23 2017

Kashmiri girls grieving the death of Tawseef Ahmad Wani, a 22-year-old man killed yesterday by a tear gas shell when Indian occupying forces attacked protesters. Fifty others were also injured, some seriously.

Indian police claimed young Tawseef was a “chronic stone pelter” who had been involved in 10 stone pelting cases since 2010 & was previously booked twice under the Public Safety Act (PSA). That would mean he had been stone pelting since the age of 15. That would make him a very courageous young man & a great loss to the Kashmiri freedom struggle.

The PSA is a draconian measure to repress dissent, victimize youth, & give impunity to the occupying army. In an ugly irony, it developed out of British efforts to repress the Indian struggle for freedom from British colonialism.

There were three militants killed in the same encounter. Their faces were draped at their funeral prayers because they had sustained serious burn injuries. The funerals of Majid Mir, Shakir Ahmad, & Irshad Ahmad were attended by thousands.
May the four young men Rest In Peace.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Basit Zargar)

There’s no way to put a good spin on the lynching of the undercover cop in Srinagar. It was reprehensible. Most Kashmiris are horrified by the act & condemn it. It is not who they are & it is not the character of their freedom struggle.

Two men have been arrested but we don’t know enough about them to judge whether they were a criminal element or just young men who snapped under the constant pressure of the occupation.

The deceased was on surveillance duty at the main mosque which the occupying army has made a center of conflict, taking pictures of people as they left after midnight during a speech by an independence leader. When they confronted him to stop him from taking pictures, he pulled out his service revolver & started shooting into the crowd, injuring three people. Media reports are vague but he was reportedly beaten to death & then hung. Details here would be useful. Was he dead when they hung him? Did they actually hang him?

This is a condemnable act but no time to join the chorus of denunciations by the Indian army & Indian media. If we can’t understand how young people could snap from being beleaguered by an occupying army, facing at least one murder a day by those forces, subject to constant surveillance, harassment, violence, rape, torture, disappearance, incarceration, then we don’t understand much.

Spinoza once said “We study the past neither to weep nor to laugh but to understand.” We study this crime not to condemn the Kashmiri freedom struggle but to understand & to condemn the occupation that has twisted & destroyed the lives of so many.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir. May the officer Rest In Peace.

Listening to a news report about Jamie Oliver getting sued for defamation of character by a magnate in the coal industry who he criticized. It reminds me of when some of the thuggish union leadership circulated rumors that I was prostituting myself every night on the job. In a predominantly male workplace that was obviously causing me problems so I approached a lawyer to sue the union for defamation of character. He laughed & said those kind of suits are for celebrities. My reputation, as an ordinary worker, had no monetary value.

Hate to be censorious, but could you take a pleasure cruise around the Mediterranean whilst thousands of refugees are drowning? That’s a psychological numbness most of us don’t share. Thank heavens for that.


Why the hell is Bilal Abdul Kareem doing lovey-dovey interviews with al-Qaeda guys in Syria? He allows them to justify themselves according to the Quran, present themselves as freedom fighters, & doesn’t challenge them on their criminality. Is he trying to present a human face to terrorism?

Olive Stone: sycophant & Islamophobe

Oliver Stone has been a conspiracy thinker for a long time–as least as long as his 1991 movie “JFK.” At some point along the way he became half-baked & has now become an apologist for Assad & Putin.

This Financial Times interview with him expresses his sycophancy & inability to analyze state power but most tellingly Stone expresses the Islamophobia that has derailed him beyond repair. That segment begins at 5:44 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiuplgzbCC4