Bangladesh prime minister too busy managing sweatshops & child labor to provide humanitarian aid to Rohingya refugees

Sheikh Hasina meeting with Swedish Ambassador to Dhaka Charlotta Schylyter (Jan 29 2018) from Dhaka Tribune Jan 30 2018

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was not exaggerating yesterday when she told the Swedish ambassador Charlotta Schlyter that “The presence of a large number of forcibly evicted Rohingya people in Cox’s Bazar is creating a massive socioeconomic, environmental & demographic pressure on Bangladesh.” She already had her hands full managing a recalcitrant labor force, extracting maximum profits from 5 million child workers, & turning the country into a sweatshop inferno, in Dante’s sense of the word. She told the Swedish diplomat that Bangladesh has plans for even more sweatshops across the country which child labor makes particularly attractive to foreign shysters deciding where to invest.

Hasina has proven extremely successful in advancing massive inequality & the interests of exploiters in Bangladesh. When she took office in January 2009, there were only 5,114 Bangladeshi multimillionaires. In just nine years in office, she has increased their numbers to 68,891 multimillionaires. She’s a very busy woman & has no time for the socioeconomic demands of refugees like food, toilets, housing, healthcare, education. For heaven’s sake, she hasn’t got time to provide that for Bangladeshi workers. Cry us a river, sister!

That’s why she came up with the monstrous scheme of forcibly deporting up to a million traumatized Rohingya refugees back to the killing fields of Burma. That’s why she told the Swedish ambassador (something of a numbskull herself) that Bangladesh still plans on deporting Rohingya refugees to that uninhabitable island flooded out most of the year by monsoons. She also expressed appreciation to ambassador Schlyter for Sweden’s humanitarian support for the Rohingya refugees. What support would that be? Exactly how much money has Sweden provided for those socioeconomic demands of the refugees. We’d like to see an accounting verified by Rohingya representatives. How many Rohingya refugees has Sweden offered asylum to, complete with visas, work, education, & healthcare rights? Words are just words, sister. We live in a hard-scrabble world where action talks & bullshit walks.

Support our Rohingya brothers & sisters by demanding no forced deportation, dump the vicious plan for the flooded island, & that Rohingya refugees be allowed asylum in any country they choose with full refugee rights.

(Photo of Hasina & Schlyter from Dhaka Tribune)

Indian Army terrorism in Kashmir

Indian stone pelter or terrorist in Kashmir (Trending Kashmir) Jan 29 2018

Documentation of Indian military marauding & terrorism in Kashmir: this kind of evidence for a human rights & war crimes tribunal is exactly why India has presently shut down the internet in at least five districts of Kashmir.

(Photo from Trending Kashmir FB wall)

Indian occupying troops direct fire directly at heads of young people

Javid Ahmed Lone, father of Suhail killed Jan 27 in Shopian district (Waseem Andrabi) Jan 30 2018

Three unidentified women console the father of 24-year-old Suhail Javid Lone who saw his son shot to death in front of their family home when Indian occupying troops fired indiscriminately at unarmed civilians last Saturday in the Shopian district of Kashmir. We know they fired indiscriminately because we have photographic evidence. Twenty-year-old Javid Ahmad Bhat, another unarmed youth, was also killed. Both died from bullet wounds to the head. There is no report that either young man was involved in stone pelting or in protesting–though neither is an offense punishable by execution under international law. Nineteen other civilians were injured, some of them critically & requiring specialized treatment.

Just within four days last week, Indian troops killed at least three & seriously injured six other young people, one as young as 12, by bullet wounds to the head. An international tribunal on Indian war crimes in Kashmir would likely judge that to be attempts to summarily execute youth in Kashmir.

Indifference to the occupation of Kashmir is not an option. Help build an international movement in solidarity with their freedom struggle. Our sincere condolences to the families & friends of Suhail Javid Lone & Javid Ahmad Bhat. May their beloved sons Rest In Peace.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Waseem Andrabi via Kulgam News Agency)

Another photo from the occupation of Kashmir worth a thousand lies

Indian Army in Kashmir Jan 27 2018

Another photo worth a thousand lies: take a close look at this photo of Indian occupying soldiers in Kashmir. Its time & place aren’t specifically identified but it appeared in Indian media in an article titled “Two civilians killed as army fires at stone-pelters in Shopian” on January 27th, 2018. Are they charging stone pelters & unarmed protesters with machine & pellet guns in an urban setting? This would be called documentation for reckless disregard of human life violating every standard of human morality & countless international laws.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo from Rediff.com)

There was a strong reaction by some against Pakistani journalist Usman A Khan Tahir’s statement condemning the suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan for which the Taliban claimed responsibility. So far, 103 people were killed & 235 are in hospital with different degrees of injuries. Some will die, others will be permanently disabled, all will be emotionally devastated for the rest of their lives after sustaining over 16 years of occupation & bombing. Hundreds of their loved ones are waiting outside morgues, hospitals, or preparing funerals. Not a single one of those who were blown to death, injured, or lost a beloved family member will parse the odious & false distinction between a US-coalition bomb & a Taliban bomb.

Afghan Ramzy Noor lays out the meaning of equivocations about Taliban suicide bombing with particular poignancy & cogency: “I walk by that road often and so are my friends; someday we will also be labelled by Pakistanis as “soldiers who got blown away” after our dead bodies are on the street. Such is the mentality of our neighbours that despite their continuous support for US occupation and continuously sheltering terrorists they still have the audacity to blame us.”

(PS: Just to clarify, there is considerable opposition to the Afgan War among Pakistanis, including active opposition. Those who rationalize Taliban bombing of civilians do not represent the best of Pakistani politics.)

Clarifying the distinction between anti-Semitism & anti-Zionism

Gaza Jan 25 2018

Clarifying the distinction between anti-Semitism & anti-Zionism is always imperative. Persecution & pogroms against Jews were a major historical problem for centuries, culminating in the WWII holocaust of six-million. It was a different political phenomenon but of a piece with colonialism which treated black & brown peoples around the world with unimaginable savagery. What makes the holocaust seem more monstrous is that it was carried out by colonial powers on mostly white people (the exception is the holocaust of Roma) in the metropolitan centers of Europe. The struggle to end persecution & violence against Jews was & remains part of the struggle against colonialism–the legacy of which this planet has not yet decisively defeated as is so evident in Palestine, Kashmir, Burma, Africa, & Latin America. It can be cogently claimed that colonialism is being resurrected in the form of neoliberal & sweatshop economics. Inequality & exploitation is the nature of capitalism.

Zionism developed not as a liberation movement against colonialism but as a supremacist doctrine which yoked its destiny to colonial forces hoping to broker a Jewish-only country. Israel was forged with paramilitary death squads & is only maintained as a military fortress by substantial aid from the US & other countries. Zionism has proven itself a failed doctrine for ending the persecution of Jews–an eventuality foreseen & denounced by its critics, including Jewish activists who died in the holocaust.

Because of its military & political clientage, Zionism has grown to be a powerful political force around the world. Israel’s US lobbying group AIPAC is one part of that. Because Zionism is associated with white supremacy, racism, Islamophobia, colonialism, fascism, it has wide influence internationally. In the US, Zionists (Jewish, Christian evangelicals, atheists) are influential in anti-immigration groups, eugenics & population control groups, & elite circles within the women’s movement associated with the Democratic Party. There is no need to pull our punches in exposing the reactionary & racist role of Zionism in politics. But regrettably, many who focus only on AIPAC have made their polemics resonate with Hitler’s putrid assertion that Jewish bankers run the world. Jews don’t run this world nor do they control media. Because they were largely an urban people, they placed great value on education & many, including Zionist Jews, have achieved positions of power. That doesn’t mean they run the world.

We oppose Zionism & its monstrous colonial creation of Israel because it is supremacist, racist, colonialist based on ethnic cleansing, apartheid & militarism & not because its ideologues & citizens are Jewish. We stand with Jews against persecution & social hatred as we stand with all who are oppressed for who they are. That’s why we stand with Palestinians against Israel. Support the cultural & economic boycott of Israel. Check every label on products you buy to make certain its country of origin is not Israel or the settlements in the West Bank.

Photo is a Palestinian woman in Gaza where Israel which controls the water supply has made 95% of the water contaminated.

Robert Parry, editor of putrid Consortium News, dies

Robert Parry, the editor of Consortium News, died yesterday. He had been a reporter for mainstream media since the 1970s & received many awards for investigative journalism, as recently as 2015 from Harvard University. He’s of my generation but quite frankly I was not familiar with his reporting until Consortium News became a leading journal of putrid Assadist propaganda, Putin apologetics, & deep state, “new McCarthyism” conspiracy thinking.

Parry is of a type, very like Chris Hedges, who most of their lives worked within the status quo of journalism but late in life became born-again gurus to libertarians moving so far to the right that you can’t tell them from Fox News. The “retired” CIA, FBI, & military officers who now lead the corrupt antiwar movement are all writing eulogies to Parry as a principled journalist. Those who support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians wouldn’t know a political principle if it came up & bit them in the ass. It’s too bad Parry died early in life–at least before he could correct the monstrous mistakes & compromises he made in supporting dictatorship & counterrevolution in Syria & repressive government in Russia. May he RIP. Hopefully we can also write the obituary for Consortium News.

Parsing false distinctions for who blows up or bombs civilians

Pakistani journalist Usman A Khan Tahir on the suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan:

“Pakistanis on killings in Afghanistan:

Haram massacre = If a large number of Afghan civilians are killed by US airstrikes; leads to strong condemnations.

Halal massacre = If a large number of Afghan civilians are killed by Taliban; leads to strong whataboutery, justifications and whitewashing.”
*****
It can only be added with the greatest condemnation that the exact same rationale is offered by the corrupted antiwar movement for Syrian & Russian bombing whilst they condemn US-coalition bombing of civilians in Syria. Some who oppose Assad share the same fatal political fallacy by condemning Syrian & Russian bombing but hoping the US-coalition will disconnect from the counterrevolution & bomb civilians to defeat Assad. At this point in history, anyone who looks to bombers & special forces for liberation proves themselves of no use whatsoever in politics except to serve militarism & the most reactionary forces in world politics.

The only principled politics demand the end of bombing civilians for any reason whatsoever. Syrian revolutionists, Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingya, & other oppressed peoples would not be in a stronger position with bombers & special forces. What their struggles demand is international active support to bring the violence against them to a decisive defeat.

The Palestinian ambassador to the US accused Trump of “backstabbing” the Palestinians. The US backed the Zionist colonization of Palestine in 1948 & continues to support the ethnic cleansing of Palestine today; has been bankrolling the military occupation of Palestine, the bombing of Gaza, & is subsidizing Israeli settlements. Most Palestinians & commentators would consider being a fundamental pillar of Israeli existence way beyond backstabbing to outright sponsorship & clientage. Uncompromising Palestinians & their supporters call such Palestinian leadership, including Mahmoud Abbas, the “backstabbers” since US policy toward Palestinians has never been other than massive ethnic cleansing.