Really wish some well-known anti-Assadists were not making asses of themselves with articles eulogizing McCain. They evince unprincipled & inscrutable idiocy about the political character of McCain & US militarism & are handing Assad propagandists & their guppy squads a weapon to use against the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. In politics today, you just can’t be stupid about the US Pentagon & if you are, you don’t belong writing political commentary which jeopardizes the struggle against the Assad dictatorship. US military policy is of a piece from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen to Libya to Syria. There is not one instance of humanitarian intent in the over 25,000 bombs the US has dropped in Syria. Ask the people of Hanoi or Raqqa or Mosul or Kabul or Sana’a.
An article on how censorship on social media works hand in glove with the Israeli government. Just as the struggle against censorship on social media (which must be legal & political) is part of the struggle against Israeli occupation, apartheid, & genocide.
Take a look at the size of this August 2016 political rally in Kashmir. Do you think “azaadi” & independence from India might be the popular mandate of the Kashmiri people?
Go back India, go back.
You know the increasing censorship on social media speaks to the imperative need to create political structures of collaboration & communication. This censorship thing is only going to get worse with the sole intent of cutting freedom struggles off from their supporters around the world & going back to the days when news blackouts prevailed & social struggles against war, occupation, & genocide were isolated. That we cannot allow. We have to get dead serious about establishing the structures of collaboration outside social media along with fighting legally & politically against censorship on social media.
If it’s true many Syrians are mourning John McCain as a friend of the revolution, this is not surprising at all since even in revolutions contending political visions exist. To posit that those mourning McCain represent all of the revolution is nonsense. It is certainly not to be taken as wisdom or gold coin that some Syrians do not understand the political character of this preeminent US war monger who was no friend to the people of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, or Palestinians. If some Syrians see McCain as an ally, that speaks to political naiveté or conservatism among them but primarily it testifies to the absolute political bankruptcy of so-called progressive forces & political figures like Tariq Ali, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, & others who marched lockstep with fascists in supporting the Assad dictatorship & counterrevolution in Syria so that some Syrians mistook McCain as an ally.
That damn fool Sam Charles Hamad has written at least three high-flown eulogies for war monger John McCain calling him a great friend of the Syrian revolution & of the Arab Spring uprisings. That’s because Hamad supports the Syrian Arab Spring uprising only through a misunderstanding on his part–a misunderstanding he has not been able to clarify. Citing at least three confused Syrians in exile & Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli commentator on Syria who resides in Chicago, he claims in Alaraby journal that condolences poured in to social media from Syrians mourning McCain’s death. That’s part of Hamad’s support for US military intervention in Syria & his complete misunderstanding of the thousands of bombs the US has dropped there as part of the counterrevolution.
These confusions are of a piece with Hamad’s ardent support for Israel, equivocations about the Palestinian struggle, & insistence that Israel is not an apartheid state even after the Jewish-only law was passed. If there are Syrians confused about the US role there, this is not to be encouraged with false panegyrics about the war monger McCain but refuted with the evidence of over 25,000 US bombs, none of them against the Syrian or Russian military but against Syrian civilians under the guise of taking out ISIS. Meanwhile, the Pentagon itself reports that over $1 billion of US weapons have ‘fallen’ into ISIS hands.
Hamad is a rightwing, pro-militarist libertarian. The poor fellow is demented politically if he looks at John McCain & sees a hero of popular revolution rather than a war monger & looks at Israel & sees freedom & justice for all. McCain’s militarism is entirely consistent from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen to Syria & all the many US interventions in between. There is no complex legacy or demonization but only a trail of tears & blood from all the US wars McCain supported. Alas poor Sam. He is of the same school of politics as Rania Khalek. That should be a hard pill to swallow, even for him.
One last word about John McCain: the oldest of my three brothers deployed in the Vietnam War was, like McCain, a Navy pilot who launched off aircraft carriers. They are considered an elite because of the training involved & are rewarded handsomely for their bombing & destructive skills. Another brother was a Marine & the other was in the Air Force. Not one of the three came back from that war whole. I recall with horror listening to my pilot brother describe his detachment from bombing North Vietnam–not unlike playing a video war game. That detachment was not shared by my brothers on the ground who suffered immense psychic damage from combat. I was already an antiwar activist when my pilot brother recounted his experiences & could see the formation of sociopathology where one is detached from the carnage & consequences of war & of one’s own actions. Anyone who looks to militarism as a political option either has to have their heads examined or have never been up close & personal with soldiers & veterans. There is no glory in war.
From John Scott, an Australian socialist & supporter of the Palestinian, Kashmiri, & Rohingya struggles:
“Mary Scully and Maud O’Toole, longstanding defenders of Palestinians, Rohingya, and Kashmiris, have been repeatedly suspended by Facebook for posts that in no way can be considered as offensive by any reasonable person, while vile racist and Islamophobic effluent flows unabated. I am positive that the Indian and Israeli governments, both headed by racist/communalist nutters, have been exerting pressure behind the scenes.”
August 27th
An extraordinary ferocity of commitment by a Kashmiri protester calmly facing a special forces soldier aiming a slingshot at him during protests today in Main Chowk, Sopore in north Kashmir:
The protests were in response to a new legal challenge to Article 35A of the Indian constitution which gives special status to Kashmir to legally debar settlers from coming from India to alter the politics of Kashmir in the way Zionist settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories do. Through massive resettlement or homesteading programs the Indian government could change the political landscape of Kashmir to make it compliant with Hindutva nationalism, Islamophobia, & genocide of Kashmiri Muslims.
Go back India, go back.
Article on legal challenge to Article 35A: https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/article-35-a-supreme-court-to-hear-plea-for-scrapping-jammu-and-kashmir-s-special-status-1323620-2018-08-27
(Photo by Peerzada Waseem)
There is a tiny little flap about Aung San Suu Kyi delivering the keynote address at the 43rd Singapore Lecture on the subject “Myanmar’s Democratic Transition: Challenges & Way Forward.” In fact, judging from previous speakers like Chinese president Xi Jinping, Indian prime minister Modi, Saudi prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, & German chancellor Angela Merkel, Burmese genocidaire Suu Kyi is perfectly suited as the keynote speaker. Genocide against the Rohingya people is of a piece with Chinese genocide of the Uyghur people, India’s occupation of Kashmir, the Saudi aerial bombardment of Yemen, & the German denial of refugee status to thousands fleeing war in Syria, Iraq, & Afghanistan. Who better than a genocidaire to complete the rogue’s gallery of speakers?
The Singapore Lecture is considered a prestigious forum with an audience of about 1,000 ambassadors resident in Singapore; senior government officials; business leaders; academics; carefully selected students, & members of the media. Judging from the applause Suu Kyi received, the insipid questions she was asked, the sycophantic praise & honorifics she was larded with, & the laughter her dull wit evoked, these were not people the least disturbed by that little matter of genocide.
Suu Kyi, who spoke with smug hauteur, referred in her speech to the Rohingya as “displaced persons” & suggested they were terrorists. Only one man in the audience humbly challenged her on the genocide but she played stupid as if she had no idea what the hell he was evasively talking about & her audience had no intention of making her uncomfortable with expressions of disbelief or contempt. The point of this blah blah blah rhetorical moment was drumming up business for neoliberal investment in Burma despite genocide. One student, ignoring her open collusion with the generals, asked about her lack of control over the military. Suu Kyi, pouring on the fatal charm that only a genocidaire can, answered that her government’s relationship with the military was “not that bad” & that of the three military men on her cabinet “all are rather sweet.” (We’ll put aside that her cabinet is comprised mostly of retired or current military officers.) Oh how the audience of ass-kissers tittered at her bon mot, as if those sweet generals hadn’t just participated in a monstrous genocide of nearly a million Rohingyas. One could find more political vibrancy at a gathering of the walking dead in the tenth circle of hell than in the audience at the Singapore Lecture. Again, who better than a genocidaire to complete the rogue’s gallery of keynote speakers talking to a room full of dead people?
Full lecture by Suu Kyi: https://www.facebook.com/ChannelNewsAsia/videos/1038749412957818/
(Photo is mug shot of Suu Kyi from video of Singapore Lecture)