Pepsi’s Indian subsidiary is withdrawing lawsuits against four Indian potato farmers in the Indian state of Gujarat who they claimed were violating the company’s rights over a type of potato it uses in manufacturing Lay’s potato chips. The lawsuit filed last month sought payments of 10 million rupees ($143,000) from each of the four small farmers who all operate on a few acres. Pepsi reports nearly $65 billion in international food & beverage revenue. There’s no accounting for capitalist greed.
Facebook archives from May 16, 2017 remind me that Trump would be traveling to Saudi Arabia, Israel, & the Vatican “to unite Islam, Judaism, & Christianity in the common cause of fighting intolerance & radical extremism.” Hasn’t that been an industrial scale catastrophe!? Is it just Trump that’s bombed out or also Mohammed bin Salman, Netanyahu, & Pope Francis–among the last people on earth one would look to for world peace.
This photo is from 2017 but in 2019 the Indian government has not ceased using pellet guns against unarmed protesters in Kashmir. Many protesters are working class & unable to afford the costly surgeries & medical care required to extract pellets & repair damaged tissue, particularly the damage done to eyes. Figuring out how to fund those surgeries is a political act of solidarity & humanity yet to be accomplished.
Missouri is the latest of several states passing unconstitutional laws restricting or outlawing abortion. Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. Media associates the odds of losing abortion rights with the number of rightwing judges on the US Supreme Court. What it’s really associated with is the willingness of women’s rights organizations to mobilize supporters of abortion rights in national protests. Previously, going back to the 1980s, there have been three major demonstrations in Washington, DC that each drew at least a million people in defense of abortion rights. That is what is needed now. Feminism demands rights & does not act like whipped puppies waiting for decrepit old men on the Supreme Court to see things our way.
A terrifying account of one Kashmiri family’s encounter with Indian occupying forces who invaded their home.
https://thekashmirwalla.com/2019/05/brothers-as-human-shield-one-killed-another-injured/?
The US is at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, is bankrolling Israeli genocide in Gaza, & is threatening war against Venezuela & Iran. Meanwhile, what’s left of the corrupt antiwar movement is holed up in an abandoned embassy in DC. What’s wrong with that picture? Grandstanding does not substitute for building an international movement demanding the end of US wars.
“Narendra Modi is a thug, no doubt but today, we all come together in agreeing he is also hilariously dumb. 😂”
–Muddaththir Maqsood
(PS: same could be said for Trump)
This US savagery toward refugee children is happening about three miles from my house in McAllen, Texas. This is ground zero for the refugee crisis but the immigrant rights movement has too many ties to the Democratic Party to effectively respond.
Photos show children sleeping in the dirt, covered with Mylar blankets. This is just part of the scene at the McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol station over the weekend. https://cnn.it/2W0VN45
A 50-year-old Muslim man was shot & killed & another injured by Hindu cow vigilantes in the town of Bhaderwah located in the Jammu administrative division of Jammu & Kashmir state. Jammu has a Hindu majority population. Reports on the incident are contradictory. One report says the cow vigilantes accused the men of smuggling cows but the injured surviving man said they had horses, not cows. Another report says the family claim the murdered man was a victim of cow vigilantes but the vigilantes counterclaim that they opened fire after they found the two men ‘roaming under suspicious circumstances’. What police haven’t answered is why the vigilantes thought they had a right to start shooting unarmed people & exactly what ‘roaming under suspicious circumstances’ means. According to IndiaSpend, a data journalism website, almost all of the 63 attacks since 2010 involving cow-related violence were recorded after Modi & his Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014. Forty-four Indians–39 of them Muslims–have been killed & 124 injured between 2010 & June 2018 in cow-related violence.
Hindus consider cows sacred based on the ethical principle of non-violence & belief in the unity of all life. Slaughtering or selling them or eating beef is illegal or restricted by law in 20 of the 29 Indian states. Kashmir has a ban on cow slaughter but it is widely sold in markets. No one mocks that Hindus hold cows as sacred. Because of the cow’s importance to human civilization, it is held sacred in many religious traditions. Though one can question why belief in the unity of all life does not extend to all animals like buffalo, goat, sheep, & birds, & more importantly, to Muslim & Dalit lives. In a democratic society, which India claims to be, why isn’t there tolerance for those who do not share Hindu ethical beliefs?
If the cow is considered sacred in India–even more so than Muslim or Dalit lives–one would think Hindutva nationalists would assure the highest standards of care for cows. Instead, the city of Lucknow in the state of Uttar Pradesh reports that 1,000 cows die extremely painful deaths every year due to plastic consumption. The chief veterinary officer said 20 to 25 cows are found dead on the streets every month from multiple organ failures caused by the clusters of rock solid plastic removed from their stomachs. (Lucknow has a plastic ban which is apparently not enforced.) Even if cows were not held sacred, this is an abomination.
Indian media is reporting that the family of the murdered man formed a mob that attacked the Bhaderwah police station, damaged five vehicles & set a three wheeler on fire. In response, the police used batons & tear gas on the protesters, imposed a curfew, snapped the internet, & deployed additional Indian troops. Two people have been arrested in connection with the attack & seven others detained for questioning. Protests continue because the murdered man is unlikely to see justice in an Indian court of law.
There have been protests against cow vigilanteism in India. In this Oct. 2, 2015 photo, a student activist holds a placard denouncing the killing of a 52-year-old Muslim farmer Mohammad Akhlaq by cow vigilantes in New Delhi.
(Photo by Altaf Qadri)
Physicians for Human Rights, a respected US human rights group of health professionals, issued this report that at least 890 medical professionals have been killed in Syria from 2011 through December 2018, 90-percent of them targeted by Syrian & Russian forces. Assad propagandists routinely denounce all human rights groups who report realities in Syria as stooges of the “US regime-change operation.” There’s no one left to denounce. That they have persuaded so many that it is progressive to support the Assad dictatorship & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians & medical personnel speaks to the crisis in politics which has turned the international antiwar movement into a rah-rah vehicle for every repressive regime at the expense of popular liberation struggles for democracy. The remnants of that antiwar movement are now holed up in an abandoned embassy instead of organizing antiwar protests against the several US-NATO wars.
https://phr.org/resources/medical-personnel-are-targeted-in-syria/?