Okay I’ll confess I’m sneaking peeks at the Republican convention on CNN. Who could miss a chance to hear the Duck Dynasty guy endorse Drumpf? Or see the delegates weep at the mention of Benghazi? Or see if Melania Drumpf comes off less vapid in a canned speech?

You think it’s farce until you realize that Adolph Hitler & the Nazi Party were probably just as unimpressive before they took state power.

Another police officer acquitted in death of Freddy Grey. Four acquitted so far out of six charged. Acquitted because they were negligent but not criminally so. He must have broken his own spine.

But what about all the other murders where the accused officers walked? Are we looking at kangaroo court justice? Are prosecutors intentionally blowing these cases to let the guilty walk?

Accidents happen. No one wants to hang a cop for misjudgment but in hundreds of cases a year isn’t there even one indictment?

No justice, no peace.

“Democratically elected” Erdogan in Turkey has arrested over 7,500 suspected plotters since the attempted coup last Friday. That doesn’t include all the journalists & other dissidents already in his jails.The guy’s a real champion of democracy.

This is not the best the Turkish people can get. It’s what they have until they wrest political power from Erdogan & the military to build a real democracy.

Homeless in Sindh province, Pakistan: Sindh province has Pakistan’s second largest economy. It’s the most urbanized & industrialized of Pakistan’s four provinces & Karachi its capital is the country’s financial center.

There is no reliable metric for homeless children in Sindh province but in all of Pakistan there are an estimated 1.5 million. Some are victims of massive flooding, some of massive US bombing, some are Afghan refugees. Likely most have been displaced by neoliberal economic policies dispossessing farmers & rural workers along with victims of urban slum clearances for purposes of gentrification & the neoliberal kind of “development.”

Homelessness for children isn’t just a problem in Pakistan. Worldwide the estimates of homeless children go as high as 150 million. But that may be conservative since after the first 50 million who is really counting? Millions of children around the world die before reaching their fifth birthday; 250,000 die every week from diseases & starvation; over 10 million children are slaves, including sex slaves in the pornography & prostitution trades; millions are abused, sexually exploited, murdered, or go missing; over 20 million children are refugees or displaced in their own homelands; estimates of child workers range from 250 million to 500 million.

These are the realities for tens of millions of children under neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism. How is it that children have become not just the chattel but the offal of capitalism?

(Photo of homeless children in Sindh province from Facebook wall of Jawad Jamil Kunber)

The monstrous symmetries between the Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza in July 2014 & the Indian military siege of Kashmir in July 2016 are a nightmare to witness. Hell to endure.

Some consider war & occupation on a par in a menu of social injustices & horrors but the socialist political tradition considers them preeminent concerns to which everything else is subordinated. That doesn’t require dropping other social struggles but incorporating them into antiwar & anti-occupation movements: women marching in solidarity with women under siege, anti-racist & civil rights activists marching against the racism of these onslaughts, environmentalists marching against the destruction wrought by bombs & plunder.

During the 2014 siege of Gaza, over a million people from every hamlet & metropolis around the world protested the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In this siege of Kashmir, despite the prevailing international news blackout, thousands are protesting in what may be the most massive public support for Kashmir ever. That solidarity is the work of Kashmiri activists on social media who are now prioritizing breaking the news blackout.

If some think it’s too much Kashmir too much of the time, that’s the nature of campaigning against war & occupation.
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#‎FreeKashmir‬

The hard-hitting journalistic compromises of the Guardian-UK regarding the Palestinian struggle that allow Israel to get away with murder are only rivaled by its coverage of Kashmir.

In the midst of a murderous military siege–or what the Guardian calls the “ninth consecutive day of curfew”–this is what the Guardian published: a photo of cows feeding on rubbish.

There is one noteworthy change however. Where previously the location would be identified in “Srinagar, India,” here it is located in “Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir.”

Use social media to tell the truth: Long live Kashmiri Intifada. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP)

Before anyone goes off half-cocked denouncing Pakistani culture about the “honor killing” of Qandeel Baloch in that country, it isn’t even certain that it was an honor killing but rather her brother’s alibi for a grubby drug-related homicide.

An understanding of honor killings needs to be wrested back from the realm of hating on Muslims & war mongering & considered in the context of the global problem of homicidal misogyny & violence against women.

They don’t have reliable, specific estimates of those murdered in honor killings because like most crimes against women thousands go unreported or the perpetrators unpunished because of juridical sanctions.

What is known is that honor killing is an international phenomenon practiced on every continent & not just in Middle Eastern & Asian countries. They also know that honor killings include all cultures & religions & are not specific to Muslim societies as media portrays it.

“Honor killings” is a loaded term in the context of Islamophobia. They are akin to what are more delicately termed “crimes of passion” in western societies. But the not so subtle intention of both terms is to suggest that the murder of women is in some way excusable or understandable.

As violence against women in every malignant form increases around the world, we must link the struggle against it to the struggles against war & occupation & not let our movement be hijacked by the war mongers.

Starting tomorrow, CNN & the networks will have four days of live coverage of the Republican convention. The GOP says it will have many speakers from every sphere of his life to show us what kind of person Drumpf is.

It’s a toss-up whether I would rather watch an hour of that or spend an eternity in hell.

It’s been peevishly mentioned by more than one nationalist that people like me have a lot of nerve denouncing the Indian occupation of Kashmir when the US government is involved in so many monstrous wars.

The difference between us & those nationalists is that we don’t identify with the crimes of our government but actively denounce & oppose them. Just as we denounce war, colonialism, & occupation wherever it is because we are guided by an ethos that says “an injury to one is an injury to all.”

Call us meddlers if you like but don’t bother complaining on this wall. We consider nation-states no impediment to solidarity.

Once again the extraordinary political art of Rollie Mukherjee in solidarity with Kashmiri Intifada: a prominent feature of her work is that she puts women in the heart of the struggle, where they are–not just to grieve but to participate in the struggle against brutal occupation.

Women have always played a pivotal role in social struggle & have always been denied recognition & respect for that. Rollie honors their role in her work so that she is not just an artist of resistance to colonial domination but to patriarchal domination.

Her description of this marvelous work:

“the background shows wooden houses peeled off like “open wounds”.all women have come outside .protesting…crying.yelling.in deep pain.their memory is soaked in blood of their loved ones……blood is dripping from the prisoned homes…the ordinary normal life seems a farce….while everyday brutalities of living under military occupation…..where all their rights & demands are curbed…..the walls of the houses have become porous……with constant intrusion & state surveillance ……”.