A tribute/lament for Kashmiri youth

Riksha

This is a tribute/lament by Kashmiri poet Ather Zia for those young men (in Kashmir, young men are especially targeted) executed or disappeared in the struggle for self-determination. It is also a tribute to their mothers who continue to protest against the occupation & demand justice for their children.

SONG OF A KASHMIRI AUTO (RIKSHA)

i can snake into tight alleyways
where mothers
ever careful not to splatter hot oil,
fry onions to mix with haakh[1],
that delectable old recipe
and wait and wait
and wait
for the boys to come home for dinner

and when they don’t,
i take mothers to all the morgues
in the city, and beyond
wherever they can sift for bones
if any remain
there are no maps

i am noisy, rickety,
heavy with old
plastic hearts,
film posters,
prayer-knots
my radio shut,
no doors
in this city where
time stands still and
runs – all at once
doors can be dangerous

I am open
curfews,
crackdowns,
cross-firings
and rain
I am open but not free
I am open but not free
—————————

Notes

[1] Greens

April 10th 2016

Obama, Shimon Peres, & Narendra Modi: turds of a feather

Shimon Peres getting 2012 Medal of Freedom from Obama (Official WH photo by Peter Souza)

Obama and Modi Jan 25 2015 (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Obama, our erstwhile man of the people: when he was elected, we should have asked, “what people” since his warm embrace is reserved for the terrorists of the world.

He is shown in 2012 giving the presidential Medal of Freedom to then Israeli president Shimon Peres who began his career in the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary force that terrorized Palestinians off their lands in 1947. Bill & Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright (another honoree of the Medal of Freedom in 2012), & Elie Wiesel were among those attending the presentation.

He is also shown embracing Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on a 2015 state visit to India. Modi, the very man implicated in a violent 2002 pogrom against Muslims in the state of Gujarat & in maintaining the brutal occupation of Kashmir.

Always good to remind ourselves that the US president is not “the leader of the free world” but the chief executor & administrator of US corporation & bank policies. The “people” he speaks for are thugs, criminals, & predators who look at the face of human suffering & ask, “how can we exploit all that to make a buck”?

(Both official White House photos by Pete Souza)

There’s no truth to the rumor that Texas municipalities are fighting off the incursion of unlicensed Sharia Law courts to circumvent the US Constitution. It’s a complete, albeit persistent, hoax.

Conservative political groups in the state quote an official of the Center on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as saying, “If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land.” But this is actually the bastardization of a Tea Party politician who said ““If we are persecuting Muslims & undocumented immigrants, who gives a rat’s ass about the law of the land.”

There has been alarm that those fictitious Sharia courts would introduce stoning adulterers, dismembering thieves, & beheading juvenile delinquents. That just isn’t the way things are done in Texas. Here there is a strong vestigial Confederate tradition & miscreants & heretics are just shot down, hung, or dragged behind pickup trucks. If they ever see a court of law, they’ll face the death penalty for sure just for playing hooky. Sometimes they get executed on the spot. Our judges are armed & our courts don’t mess around.

The Confederate legacy explains how Texas has produced political figures of the low moral stature of George Bush, Rick Perry, & now Greg Abbott. So please don’t worry about creeping Sharia Law here. As long as the Confederacy reigns, Texas will keep pouring out boneheads.