A woman who was 9-months pregnant biked her two toddlers out of the wild fire zone in California. She gave birth today. God bless that momma & baby.

Are any of my professor friends in the US or Canada willing to advise an Indian scholar how to obtain a post-doctoral scholarship? If so, can you let me know & I’ll link you to the person?

The common denominator in libertarian politics: they support regimes against popular opposition. You are a libertarian, or possibly a Stalinist, if you support the Assad dictatorship, the repressive Putin regime, the Venezuelan government against protesters, the Burmese junta carrying out genocide, the Duterte government in its death squads against the poor & martial law against Muslims, the Israeli government by claiming there is no apartheid & by opposing BDS, or Trump against the hundreds of thousands protesting him. It is the iron law of libertarianism to support governments in the name of fighting the elite.

Notification to Assad supporters: it’s safe to go back to reading “Main Stream Media” now. When it comes to reporting about the Rohingya genocide, especially about the character of ARSA, you can’t tell Assad propaganda sources from MSM, especially Breitbart Reports. It’s all Wahabbi/Salafi-trained insurgents from Saudi Arabia & Pakistan all the time. No more documentation required for Bannon than for Beeley & Bartlett or other fascists.

In the early days of the women’s movement in the 1960s-70s, we had consciousness raising groups where women met weekly to discuss the emotional, social, political conflicts in our lives. There were strict guidelines: just listening to other women describe their experience, no judging, no criticizing. To many of us, consciousness raising was absolutely essential to understanding that what felt like personal failings were actually part of the psychology of the oppression of women.

That what makes this #MeToo movement so marvelous. It’s like a mass consciousness raising movement because it drags out of the shadows the shame & guilt women often feel when they are victims of harassment, assault, violence–as if they were somehow responsible for what happened to them. Refuting that collective self-reproach & guilt will advance the struggle against these crimes & advance women’s liberation.

Indian occupying forces firing tear gas shells at unarmed protesters in Srinagar during protest March 3rd, 2017. What makes this measure of violence any more acceptable in a country under occupation than it is for peaceful protesters in any other country?

(Photo from The Atlantic)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has never condemned the US-NATO war in Afghanistan even after 16 years of bombing thousands of civilians & villages, mosques, farmlands, schools, hospitals; not after the country has become a field of land mines; not after the torture prisons, unspeakable human rights crimes, increasing child labor, thousands of children orphaned, growing drug addiction, & millions of war refugees. HRW doesn’t object to any of that. It just wants the US & European militaries to bomb, blow up, & torture people in a humane way, according to international law.

Now, as Afghans enter the 17th year of such atrocities, HRW has put out this vile video which is racist & misogynist against Afghans up to its eyeballs. It isn’t just the vile caricatures but that HRW takes the Islamophobic war mongering used to justify the war in October 2001 & turns it against the Afghan people: US-NATO had to liberate Afghan women so they could go to school & get their nails done. HRW doesn’t mention that the sole accomplishment is a nail salon in downtown Kabul. So now when Afghan women get shot down or bombed, at least their nails will be done.

Shame on HRW. US-NATO out of Afghanistan.

This repulsive & racist depiction of a Taliban is a screen shot from the video. You don’t have to hold the Taliban in any respect to object to the arrant racism of this caricature.

VIdeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeIi6-D-3pc

The European Union is trying to pull off a dog & pony show with a resolution blocking cooperation with the Burmese military when such a resolution has already been in force for several years. It’s to make the EU look like it’s doing something about the Rohingya genocide without endangering the billions that EU member nations have invested in Burma.

Now the World Bank is trying to pull off its own stunt. It just announced it would withhold a $200 million loan to Burma. But that loan, which is chump change to the World Bank, is only one of 13 projects in Burma funded by the World Bank. They said the bank would continue to fund “high-impact projects that support education, health services, electricity, rural roads & inclusion of all ethnic groups & religions, particularly in Rakhine state.” It’s not that the genocide went right over their heads but that they will not allow it to stand in the way of making billions. That’s how sick capitalism is in its barbaric phase.

Photo is Rohingya refugee with his child trying to swim the Naf river to Bangladesh–either because he cannot afford to pay the boaters ferrying refugees across or because Bangladeshi border guards have destroyed the boats. This is what the EU & World Bank are choosing to play stupid about.

Stand with the Rohingya people in demanding an end to genocide & full human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo from Twitter)

The Burmese tourism industry (controlled by the military) is concerned that (as they see it) ARSA has caused a drop in visitors to the country. Unlike the generals, Suu Kyi, Buddhist monks, Catholic Church in Burma, & the authors attending the Irrawaddy Literary Festival, some people are actually horrified by genocide. The remarkable thing is that nearly 3 million people spent vacations in Burma last year when the junta was also involved in a genocidal offensive. Nearly 2.3 million have already toured there this year.

You see the same kind of tourism reports about Kashmir under occupation or about leisure cruising in the Mediterranean where thousands of refugees are drowning. The same kind of people who go on vacation in war, occupation, & genocide zones or cruise by people drowning are the ones who go on slum tours to stare at the poor people. It’s a pathology called racism. Or maybe it’s just indifference to human life.

This could be Palestine; it could be Kashmir. Both struggles have distinguished themselves by fearless defiance against colonialism & occupation for now seventy years. Such intransigence is a marvel of the human spirit against oppression. But it isn’t what these young people want to do with their live energy. They have other things to do, poetry to write, songs to sing, children to love, places to see, freedom to breathe.

This is a protest in the Maisuma area of Srinagar. Stand with Kashmiris in demanding an end to the occupation & for self-determination.

(Photo by Basit Zargar)