Ahmed Mahmoud Eid is one of 1,700 Palestinian refugees in Syria arrested, tortured, & killed in Assad’s gulag. He was arrested in February 2013 & where he is held, his condition, or even if he is alive is not known.
Support for the Palestinian struggle is incompatible with support for the Assad dictatorship. Those who use anti-Semitic ideology to justify support for Assad endanger Palestinians in Syria & the Palestinian struggle as a whole by associating their struggles with hatred for Jews. They would also be endangering Jews in Syria but the Assad dynasty long ago persecuted or hounded all Jews out the country.
(Photo from Action Group For Palestinians of Syria)
A picture worth a thousand lies: a Palestinian woman in East Jerusalem whose home has been expropriated by Israeli settlers was confronted by a gang of Zionist thugs when she returned to retrieve belongings that may not have been trashed. And we thought being taunted by them on social media was bad! This is the ugly face of colonial-settler & supremacist Zionism.
We should take a moment to pay our respects to those who died yesterday in the earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. May they Rest In Peace. We still don’t know if there were reverberations in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
Anyone at the Harvard seminar on Kashmir who can report to us how it went? What we really want to know is if Kashmiri voices were heard from the speakers or from attendees? We don’t care about the prestige of Harvard so much as that many Podunk Universities take their political cues from the Ivy League.
Modi was denied a visa to travel & speak in the US in 2005 because of his role in the 2002 pogrom against Muslims while chief minister of the state of Gujarat. Today he’s the toast of the town being feted by all the leading figures in politics & Wall Street who see gold in colonial exploitation of Kashmir combined with sweatshop economics in India. The nexus between politicians, corporations & fascism is laid bare. The growing Kashmiri solidarity movement & #BoycottIndia give us the vehicles to push this tsunami back with the counterforce of unity in numbers & economic power.
Yesterday, Modi inaugurated the ‘Gandhi Peace Garden’ on the campus of the State University of New York’s Old Westbury campus on Long Island as well as the ‘Gandhi Solar Park’ at the UN headquarters in NYC. India gifted 50 solar panels to the UN as a form of hush money. Now Modi can use the peace garden to lead yoga lessons, leading with his most accomplished asanas, the kissing ass & brutalizing children asanas.
Columbia University has a forum today on why Kashmiri voices are excluded from discussions on Kashmir without having a single Kashmiri speaker. It’s not that the sarcasm & colonial racism escapes them. Recently, they held a forum where Indian journalist & Modi propagandist Barkha Dutt was a featured speaker. It’s all about collusion with India in silencing Kashmiri voices & most likely part of a sophisticated campaign to make Kashmir a territorial dispute between Pakistan & India, not a struggle for Kashmiri self-determination against India’s colonial occupation.
TM Krishna is an Indian singer & writer who speaks cogently here about India’s brutal actions in Kashmir. Indian activists are playing an especially important role in opposing the Modi regime by speaking out, organizing protests & investigative teams to Kashmir. They know well from Indian military action against oppressed castes & tribal struggles that ‘what happens in Kashmir will not stay in Kashmir’ but will engulf all of Indian democracy. There is the beginning of a national anti-colonial, antiwar movement.
Modi was a keynote speaker at a business forum in NYC today sponsored by billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Global Business Forum. The forum was attended by Bill Clinton, former IMF chief Christine Lagarde, & several CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Modi’s theme was ‘restoring global stability’ & the revolutionary character of corporate tax cuts to investors. One of the events at the summit will be sponsored by Saudi Arabia.
After the Bloomberg summit, an investment round table organised by India will take place with 40 major companies about investment in India & almost certainly about investment in Kashmir. Modi will also be participating in the first India CARICOM summit with 14 leaders of Caribbean countries.
Capitalism sees Modi as a leading figure in its fascistic political thrust, especially after his genocidal onslaught against Kashmiris. What happens in India doesn’t stay in India. The struggle against this must continue to be internationalized & makes #BoycottIndia an imperative.
