Does it surprise anyone that Israeli snipers are targeting Palestinian children in the Great Return March? Just like they targeted children in the 2014 murderous bombing siege of Gaza. The brutalization, one may say, the genocide of children is the very nature of Israeli policy against Palestinians.
Stand with Palestinians. Prepare to hit the streets demanding Israel end the violence against unarmed, peaceful protesters.
(Photos from Twitter of Great Return March @GreatReturnMa)
Just after three newsreaders made a presentation about bias in media to control what people think, the local CBS news affiliate presented coverage of the Palestinian Great Return March in Gaza which turned unarmed, peaceful protesters into inciters of Israeli military violence, including drones & snipers. The protest was organized by a large network of activists internationally, including Hamas. Events are planned for 46 days from today until May 15th which marks the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) when Zionist paramilitary forces drove 750,000 Palestinians off their lands to set up the state/military fortress of Israel in 1948.
It is clearly going to be necessary to hold rallies around the world in solidarity demanding that Israel end the violence against unarmed protesters & the right of return for all Palestinian refugees forced off their lands whose families still live in refugee camps in several countries.
Photos are participants at Great Return March today in Gaza: elderly, children, young families.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Palestinians. Honor the cultural & economic boycott of Israel.
(Photos from Twitter wall of Great Return March @GreatReturnMa)
So I’m wondering about doing a podcast. I love chatting up & interviewing people & think it might be a strong way to get out news about war, persecution, occupation, genocide from those engaged in struggle against them. You have to have a suitable voice & can’t sound monotone, whiny, or falsetto so if I lower my voice an octave & talk like a toughie I may be able to pull if off. Unlike many podcasters, my guests would actually have things substantial to say. What thinkest thou?
Tribute to Kashmiri martyr Ashfaq Majeed Wani:
“each morning.
she buys a sparrow
and sets it free at your grave.
this is how she breaks
occupation.
-shaheed e azam.”
–tweeted by Mohsen Shah @zikrejaana
There’s a discussion on Twitter asking if the US should recognize Palestine as a sovereign independent state? Like the US has any rights at all over Palestine!? You have to be completely stupid to believe there can be a bantustate solution to Israeli colonialism, apartheid, genocide. Palestinians long ago proposed the only workable & democratic solution: a democratic, secular state where Palestinians & Jews can live as brothers & sisters. Zionism is no part of that equation & must be defeated because it is terrorist in ideology & practice.
This photo is the Great Return March today where 20,000 Palestinians marched peacefully for the right of return for Palestinian refugees. The unarmed marchers were fired on by Israeli snipers using drones, tear gas, & live ammo. So far, they have killed fifteen Palestinians & injured 1,500 others.
Stand with Palestinians in demanding the end of occupation & their right to self-determination. Honor the cultural & economic boycott of Israel.
(Photo from Shehab News Agency)
According to officials in the UK, anonymous hate groups or individuals are circulating a call for April 3rd to be “Punish a Muslim Day.” The fliers being sent around call for specific acts of violence against Muslims with points for each vile action taken:
1. 10 points to verbally abuse a Muslim
2. 25 points to pull the head scarf off a Muslim woman
3. 50 points to throw acid in face of a Muslim
4. 100 points to beat up a Muslim
5. 250 points to torture a Muslim using electrocution, skinning, use of a rack
6. 500 points to butcher a Muslim using gun, knife, vehicle or other weapon
7. 1,000 points to burn or bomb a mosque
8. 2,500 points to nuke Mecca”
In response to these threats, many who refuse to be guppies to fascists call for April 3rd to be designated “Love a Muslim Day,” including protests for religious freedom & against the hating of Muslims in order to justify war, occupation, persecution, genocide.
A poetic tribute to torture victims by Kashmiri poet Ather Zia:
Artist Statement
As a people living under an occupation which is camouflaged within a patina of democratic set-up & draconian laws, there is a constant erasure of our bodies, memories & identities. We are inflicted with active forgetting in order to survive. At the border where the direct gaze of prose is constricted with barbed wires of multiple coercions, poetry spurts forth. Poetry makes one a witness, rather than just an archivist. One’s life-blood, all that is political & emotional; lived, remaining, & forgotten coagulates into a poem.
Abode of the God?
This poem is for those who were tortured to death & those who survived one of the known & notorious interrogation centers in Kashmir called Hari Niwas (Abode of God). Hari Niwas was a royal palace before it was turned into an interrogation center in the late 80’s & 90’s.
a phantasm above,
I am the bones under this earth
where you plan to plant
tulips, daffodils (so dear to my soil)
trying to cover
wide-mouthed pits,
filled with
shoes, limbs, amulets for protection
unblinking eyes,
a first love’s charm bracelet
husbands, sons,
lovers,
fathers
your rooms are clinging to their walls –
the abode of God, looks less so –
no diviner dare carry a broom
to erase my trace,
in this dank darkness, tinged red
I am not yet done etching tremulous lines on walls
I am not done memorizing faces that are gone,
I am not done counting and keeping time which passed,
there are still dead – dying in certain rooms
(Reposted from March 30th, 2016)
“At Habba Kadal, Srinagar today {March 2017} a child being humiliated by soldiers. This is a devastating sight for any parent.”
Why do soldiers humiliate & bully small children in Kashmir, Palestine, Burma, & in other war & conflict zones? Because children must be ruthlessly socialized to accept occupation & oppression as their natural, unalterable state in life. Children of the oppressed terrify the oppressors because they are a new generation who will demand freedom. They are never accidental victims of humiliation & violence but among the intended victims. They are the “terrorists” so feared & maligned.
(Photo by Abid Bhat from March 29, 2017)
Assad’s own Ann Coulter & Leni Reifenstahl or his Beavis & Butthead duo: Bartlett & Beeley:
By their own admission, they have only been “experts” & “independent journalists” on Syrian politics since 2014. The Syrian revolution has been going on since 2011. That’s like calling yourself a doctor after taking a four-hour course in first aid & learning how to administer CPR. Bartlett (omitting her tutelage by David Icke) actually admits her education came mostly from Global Research, the Canadian conspiracy rag based on anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, & fascist fear-mongering. It lost its cachet for anyone with all their political marbles when in 2011 it tried to discredit all the Arab Spring uprisings involving millions of Arabs in several countries as street theater orchestrated by the CIA & Mossad. That’s when their contempt for Arabs & Muslims was lit up in technicolor & they began to attract the haters & deranged lost souls in politics. Beeley admits to no education of any kind except in horse back riding. Both are clearly paid propagandists for Putin & Assad. Their primary talent is willingness to say anything to justify counterrevolution & the bombing of civilians. Sycophants are a dime a dozen but Islamophobia prefers to use women to peddle the detestable notion that Arab & Muslim women need white western Christians backed by bombers to teach them how to be free. Color them fascists & white supremacists.
(Photos are Beeley/Riefenstahl on the left & Bartlett/Coulter on the right)
Muhamed & Rouzeh Shouesh, a Syrian refugee couple in the UK living on state benefits with two college-age kids, were evicted & made homeless after they were told by London council housing authorities that they are “resilient” enough to deal with homelessness. Can the housing authorities tell us how they quantify resilience, especially the kind needed for war refugees who move to a foreign country where they’re unable to earn a living & then learn their lives have no value & they are forced to live outside in the rainy, cold climate of England? This is when you kinda wish that ‘eye for an eye’ revenge thing were a fully operative legal option which would take its revenge on the housing officials.
(Photo is from refugee rights protest in London last Saturday)