Political affinities between the Kashmiri, Palestinian, & Rohingya struggles

The political affinities between the Kashmiri & Palestinian struggles are very powerful & speak to the possibilities of building broad-based solidarity. This article by Shahid Lone addresses that issue. Since Indian nationalists are making an issue of Rohingya refugees in India, including in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, that solidarity can be developed further in a powerful way. It isn’t just Islam that unites but Intifada & the struggles against occupation & genocide.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180107-kashmir-and-palestine-are-punchbags-for-their-occupiers/

Lost Kashmiri History archives

Because of how history is used to justify war, occupation, & genocide, it’s necessary to get a hold on the essentials. It’s almost trite to say that but lies about their history is a whopping issue for Palestinians, Kashmiris, the Rohingya, & of course for many others fighting persecution–most particularly the struggle of indigenous peoples against colonizers.

This encyclopedic initiative called “Lost Kashmiri History” is by a collective of volunteers reclaiming Kashmiri history “in the struggle of memory against forgetting.” You’ll find lots of invaluable information to help understand the history of Indian colonialism in Kashmir, the military occupation, & the struggle for self-determination.

http://lostkashmirihistory.com/

#JusticeForZainab

Justice for Zainab Jan 11 2018

The murder of this small girl by a pedophile in Pakistan has deeply touched & angered many around the world. Violence against children & women are not just personal crimes but are political crimes rooted in the oppression of women. Every time a child is murdered so unspeakably, the world seems to shift on its axis. May this precious child Rest In Peace. But may we be haunted by her death not just until the perpetrator is arrested & prosecuted but until we have created a world free of such barbarism against children.

#JusticeForZainab

Rest In Peace Paul Francis Scully

January 11th is the 21st anniversary of my beloved younger brother Paul’s suicide. He had a learning disability called “mental retardation” in an unenlightened era that treated those so stigmatized as inferior. They were expected to be warehoused in an institution or kept away from the rest of us so as not to discomfort. He suffered deeply from that stigma all his life but couldn’t escape it.

To be honest, I didn’t understand his learning disability until after he died. He had a wonderful wry wit, was a brilliant Scrabble player, had an extraordinary mathematical memory, read the NY Times & intelligently discussed the news. Abuse of other human beings infuriated him. But he couldn’t get a decent job & was always treated like a dolt. The stigma of retardation doesn’t recognize emotional depth or complexity & subtlety in human intelligence & just writes off those with learning problems as stupid slugs. That’s why he was also profoundly sad & lonely & would act shy & taciturn so others wouldn’t spot his humiliating ‘condition’. But the condition was never his; it was social hatred for those with stigmatized limitations.

After working with the Self Advocacy Movement of those with learning disabilities, I’ve come to understand “mental retardation” as a social construct, a deeply discriminatory, malignant construct that isolates & stigmatizes people & which humane societies will have no part of. I can’t bring him back to tell him his suicide taught me to understand what he knew so well. But I can keep my commitment to object when people use the “R-word” or any of its derivatives like “libtard” as an epithet or when they refer to adults with learning disabilities as toddlers in adult bodies. I can honor him by using the anniversary of his death to object to the stigma & barriers put up against full participation in social life for those with disabilities.

May he Rest In Peace. I still miss that sweet, sensitive, very kind & very witty man.

Are reluctant Assadists foot soldiers for the new national socialism?

Girl emerging from rubble in eastern Ghouta Jan 9 2018 (Abdulmonam Eassa:AFP:Getty Images)

Many Assad supporters are becoming quite open, even reckless, about their anti-Semitism. They have never tried to conceal their Islamophobia since it plays so well to their constituency. Their leading Irish voice is Gearóid Ó Colmáin, an amoral, demented, & unapologetic fascist who supports the Rohingya genocide & is endorsed by fascists Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley as an authority on that genocide. Curious they claim that since he’s never been to Arakan state in Burma & their only credentials for expertise on Syria is that they’ve spent several weeks there over the course of three years always embedded up the ass of the Syrian army, like all propagandists travel in war zones.

Colmáin knows who he’s croaking to & frequently posts hateful things about Jews, as well as the Rohngya who he calls “Bengalis” as the fascist Burmese junta insists. This is his latest about Jews: “You can never please them. Neurosis IS the Jewish condition, which is why it is a pathology and not a religion.”

Those I call “reluctant Assadists”–i.e., those who say Syria is too complicated to understand so they defer to fascist propagandists, deny the popular revolution entirely, & support Assad’s dictatorship claiming it’s better than the head-choppers–have to ask themselves where they stand on association with political forces like Colmáin, Bartlett, & Beeley. Are they comfortable collaborating with fascist forces? Do they still kid themselves that you can call yourself progressive when your politics are rooted in hating on Jews, Muslims, & now the Rohingya; when you associate the Rohingya & Kashmiri freedom struggles with “Wahhabi/Salafi jihadists”; & when you herald Syrian & Russian bombers as emancipatory forces?

This surreal image from January 9th, 2018 is a young girl emerging from the rubble after Russian bombing of civilians in eastern Ghouta under the guise of clearing out mercenaries & terrorists. Is this how reluctant Assadists see social transformation to a free society? Or have reluctant Assadists taken their politics to their natural conclusion & become the foot soldiers of a new national socialism?

(Photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

We need to have what media calls a ‘conversation’ about censorship on social media. Many believe that since Twitter, Facebook, et al, are privately owned, we are not legally entitled to free speech. That in fact is the legal norm in employment, at least in the US where those social media operations are based. One can be fired for their political beliefs even though legal inroads were made against that following the McCarthy witch-hunt era. For the past several years we have watched the steady encroachment of countries demanding social media censor on their behalf. Most egregiously that includes India, Israel, the US, but also China, Russia, & other repressive countries. It seems to me that allowing regimes to dictate censorship on social media creates a legal opening for civil libertarians to oppose that censorship by whatever means necessary–from building international & public opposition to it up to litigating against it.

Some argue that we need an alternative venue to meet & exchange collaboration but why should we be driven out of the place where we can best broaden our campaigns to involve others? Hell no, we won’t go without a fight.

Oprah is no prize package. She’s got elitist politics, a massive messiah complex & thinks she talks direct into God’s ear. She may, like many of her most fawning apostles, even think she is a god. But the lowbrow, lying-assed attempts to portray her as a pimp for Harvey Weinstein are beneath contempt. Does it surprise anyone that the attacks on her are not political but misogynist? Of course misogyny is political since it is the ideology of women’s oppression. Because  racists associate pimping with Blacks, racism also certainly plays a huge element in this slander.