Lenin would get quite a kick out of all these retired CIA & FBI agents leading the antiwar movement who are now defending Russia after spending their careers trying to take it down. The whole farce would make sense to Stalin since he’s the author of such folly. And quite frankly, it makes sense to me. I’ve been in politics so long I recognize derangement when I see it.

If you want to know the character of Russia, look at where it’s selling & deploying military weapons.

Marx said history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce. Libertarians & modern Stalinists have made the two entirely indistinguishable.

As the story goes, Israel shut down the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem yesterday after three Palestinian gunmen smuggled weapons into the compound & opened fire on two Israeli policemen, killing them both. In the ensuing shootout, all three of the Palestinians were killed: 29-year-old Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Jabareen, 19-year-old Mohammed Hamed Abd Al-Latif Jabareen, & 19-year-old Mohammed Ahmed Mafdal Jabareen.

What actually happened isn’t really clear since media reports conflict & video of the event isn’t easy to forensically interpret. What we do know is that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory illegally occupied by the Israeli army which conducts constant provocations against Palestinians & impedes their freedom to worship at Al Aqsa. Israeli soldiers & police guard tours of rightwing evangelical Zionist tourists from the US & Israeli extremists through the mosque compound while restricting access to Palestinians for prayer services.

It is always ritually claimed that Al Aqsa mosque compound is a sacred site to both Jews & Muslims. That is utter nonsense, a fabrication of Zionist ideologues attempting to establish a historic claim to Palestine, including all of the Muslim holy sites, based on the Old Testament. That is analogous to an Irish-American laying claim to a cathedral in the Rhineland from whence her ancestors came over three thousand years ago.

Maybe the three young men were armed. Maybe they weren’t. They could have been carrying Muslim prayer beads instead of weapons & still could have been shot & had weapons planted on them as they lay dying.

The Israeli army has no right to be in East Jerusalem, no right to occupy & desecrate the Al Aqsa mosque, & no right to restrict worship there. Of course there are scuffles because Palestinians resist when Israel flouts international law to impose colonial rule. The oppressed operate by the righteous belief that they have the right to resist oppression “by any means necessary.”

We can support Palestinian Intifada by honoring the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (BDS). Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729 & check every label on every product.

Our fullest solidarity with Palestinians & condolences to the families of the young men killed. May they Rest In Peace.

(Photo is Israeli soldiers occupying Al Aqsa mosque compound from Qatar Tribune)

Laura Loomer is a rightwing grandstander making herself a spectacle with Islamophobic, Zionist, & racist stunts. She calls herself a journalist in the same way Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, & Abby Martin do: by singing for their supper.

It’s usually best to ignore her but in this day & age when Trump has made demento all the fashion sometimes you have to answer her. In response to reports that Israeli police murdered three Palestinians at Al Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, she tweeted: “There 👏🏻 Is👏🏻 No👏🏻 Such👏🏻 Thing 👏🏻As 👏🏻A 👏🏻Palestinian👏🏻.”

Just so Loomer knows what a Palestinian looks like, we found this photo taken in the occupied West Bank. It’s from August 2015 but it’s iconic of how you know a Palestinian when you see one. The Palestinian is the boy with the broken arm being brutalized by an Israeli soldier. That’s the easiest way to identify a Palestinian. They’re the ones being brutalized & the ones resisting occupation. Just so she can’t claim we didn’t tell her.

Photo is a Tamimi boy. His family, well-known for resistance to occupation, came to rescue him from the soldier & dished out some brutalizing of their own. Held up as an object of scorn before the world, the soldier took leave & went crying home to mama.

(Photo from Reuters)

More than 11,000 Syrians have been tortured to death, including thousands hung, by the Bashar Al-Assad regime. An estimated 250,000 are in custody, likely undergoing torture, many of whom will die. But those who call themselves progressives, even revolutionaries, & blither about their love for humanity scoff that Assad would use chemical weapons or carpet bombing on civilians. Instead they write apologetics about the need to defend Syrian national sovereignty & support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. Maybe, if they could pull their heads out of Assad’s ass, they could define what that means. Whose national sovereignty? That of the Assad dictatorship? Or that of Syrian working people opposing his dictatorship to establish a democratic republic?

Where you stand on revolution & counter-revolution in Syria decides whether you stand with human solidarity & freedom or with the forces of social destruction. What happens in Syria is of the greatest political consequence. Defeat for the revolution against Assad will not decisively reverse the struggles for democracy in the Middle East & around the world but it will make them so much harder & more treacherous when they already fight against immense odds & extreme violence from the most powerful military forces in the world. When you choose which side you are on, do not choose lightly.

My article for a Kashmiri journal is not so Kashmiris may understand stone pelting–that would be presumptuous of me–but because India & Israel have criminalized stone pelters & severely punish children & youth who engage in it. The article is mainly that others around the world can get past moralizing about stone pelting as violence to understanding it as a method used to thwart the occupying armies & protect unarmed protesters–if not also to vent justified fury at the extreme violence of occupation.

The very fact that Israel & India criminalize & so harshly punish stone pelters speaks to the role they play in the struggles against occupation.

Long live Kashmiri & Palestinian Intifada. End the occupations. Self-determination for Kashmir & Palestine.