I’m no Nostradamus, but I think the extreme violence of this siege against Kashmiris & the lockdown on media (including Facebook) has met its match in Kashmiri activism on social media.

This may well be a turning point in building an anti-occupation movement in India, which is essential to ending the occupation, & to building international solidarity among activists who previously didn’t even know where Kashmir was or that there was a freedom struggle.

Long live Kashmiri Intifada. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

CBS news reports about occupation of Kashmir

Pellet xrays

This report about Kashmir in CBS news is noteworthy for a few reasons, not the least of which is the previous long-time news blackout about the Indian occupation. It shows the barbarism of pellet munitions used by the Indian army; it shows Kashmiri resistance to the occupation; & it quotes Khurram Parvez, a leading human rights activist in Kashmir.

This photo from the article is x-rays of pellet gun injuries on a 14-year-old Kashmiri girl in the ICU of a Srinagar hospital.

http://www.cbsnews.com/…/kashmir-india-protests-killed-cla…/

(Photo from Getty)

The Republican convention dragged out the long-discredited Newt Gingrich–who most of us thought was already dead since he reeks like a corpse–to deliver a rabid, vicious, dangerous attack on Muslims.

One of his most pernicious comments was that only a small percentage of Muslims are a threat to “western values” but the small percentage numbers in the millions.

The assembled Republicans dressed in American flags, with pompoms on their heads, all looking half in the wrapper cheered every rancid word he said. Everything about the convention is orchestrated & canned, even the enthusiasm. But the fact that the Republican party intends to fortify its crumbling edifice by Muslim-hating must be taken very seriously.

You can’t fight social hatred & war mongering with multicultural sermonizing. You fight it with political power. That means organizing & publicly opposing every single war & intervention using Muslim-hating as justification. And that political mission is more imperative than ever.

When those awful Drumpf kids are what salvage the Republican convention from a petulant hate-fest by turning it into hero worship of a dipshit, you know the US oligarchy has a crisis on its hands.

A CBS analyst said the Republican party is clearly dissolving right before our eyes. What’s the downside to that? One stinking corpse of a party down; one more to go.

On the death of Garry Marshall: some say we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But excoriation over graves is what some of us do best.

He seemed like a swell guy & valued niceness. But just how nice is his film “Pretty Woman” which sentimentalized & glorified prostitution? The Women in Film organization gave him an award for the film in 1996, claiming he enhanced the image & perception of women through film. They didn’t explain how the presentation of woman as street walker enhances perceptions rather than justifies woman as cheap commodity.

Should he RIP or fry in hell? Giving him merit for niceness, he should at least barbecue a while.

Got called a “foreign aggressor” running a hate campaign against India by an irate nationalist. I don’t love or hate India anymore than I love or hate the US. I’m not that attached to the nation-state.

It was the Roman writer Terence who said “nothing human is alien to me.” Marx & Tennessee Williams both used that phrase in their writings & I think it sums up why so many of us are concerned about human rights issues anywhere & don’t let boundaries get in the way of that. We refuse to accept artificial impediments between us or stand silent if others are being persecuted. Not from noblesse oblige but because we wouldn’t like it ourselves & we’re all in this together.

If the nationalists don’t like it, they can hunker down in their provincialism & suck it.

Dibyesh Anand, Naila Smith, Rollie Mukherjee, & myself are initiating a petition to demand FB honor the Bill of Rights & stop censoring Kashmiri posts. It will also demand the reinstatement of Huma Dar who has been locked out of FB without the apparent possibility of parole for posting about Kashmir.

Dibyesh and I have already been suspended but were reinstated after a few days. Huma has been given no time frame so it appears to be permanent.

Miko Peled, the Israeli champion of Palestinian rights, was locked out of FB a few years ago & the petition campaign to have his account reinstated was successful.

This will require thousands of signatures & we will be asking everybody on our friend list & anyone else who comes within ear shot to sign & share the petition. You are in serious peril of sanction if you do not oblige. It’s kind of a sign it or else situation.

It should be pointed out that the internet in Kashmir is still on lock down & there is a news blackout so our petition becomes one way for Kashmiri voices to be heard when powerful political forces are trying to silence them.