Photojournalism used to be a valuable source–not for getting the full story of events but for indicating where in the world journalists headed because of the importance of events. The use of the photos was not lost on editors who often used captions to misrepresent social struggles, particularly, but not only, the struggle of Palestinians.

It appears photojournalism is changing in a censorship kind of way, particularly in the Guardian-UK which now focuses on sports moments, festivals like the medieval jousting festival in Australia, flowers, sunsets, & their mainstay, Hindu religious rites in an anthropological way. Their recent coverage of Kashmir ignored the occupation & violence & focused on Muslim women’s prayer rituals.
This photo from yesterday takes the cake for insularity about Kashmir. It’s not that the editors are indifferent but that they are censoring, as FB does, all news about the violent military occupation of Kashmir.

The caption reads: “Kashmir–A man holding an umbrella fishes from a weed-covered part of the Dal Lake while standing on a wooden bridge in Srinagar.” The picture wouldn’t be interesting even if there were no occupation going on–at least any more than the photo of the woman walking in the rain in Gabon.

It is certain photojournalists are submitting photos of the many protests against the occupation & of the brutalities against protesters but instead of publishing them, the Guardian chooses to publish a man fishing off a bridge.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP)

Those campaigning for Clinton should be alarmed at her recent endorsement by Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq War. We would have expected her vaunted friend Kissinger to already have endorsed her since he was the chief architect of the war behind the scenes.

Perhaps Kissinger will let Paul Bremer, his protégé & former director at Kissinger Associates, endorse in his stead since Bremer was the brutal administrator of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It has been suggested by some that the US occupation authority in Iraq under Bremer led to the formation of ISIS, whose top command are former Hussein military officers, when he shut them out of civil service jobs. Bremer is now campaigning for US troops in Iraq to fight ISIS, the monster his & Kissinger’s policies helped create.

Three years after the US invasion in 2003, The Lancet, a British medical journal, estimated that over 655,000 Iraqis had died & the UN reported the displacement of 1.5 million Iraqis inside the country. Estimates of Iraqi deaths are now nearly a million & the war is no way near ending. That does not include those who who died as a result of the First Gulf War in 1990-91 & the sanctions that followed, including the 500,000 children who died from sanctions imposed under Clinton’s presidency.

If you campaign for Clinton or if you campaign for US humanitarian military intervention in Syria, one hopes it a result of ignorance about US militarism & not indifference to the lives of other people. The criminal consequences of either will be the same. Why live with shame when you can stand against war & those who make it?

Even in revenge, I can’t bring myself to reveal the name of the halfwit who posted this in a discussion about the burkini:

“We should express outrage at any religion whose primitive & delusional beliefs require that women be denigrated & oppressed. Wrapping women in fabric is a profound evil. This isn’t really a police matter, but we should condemn the wrapping of women in fabric at every opportunity.”

Fabric stores & clothing retailers will be laid waste by the condemnation. But does divesting of all fabrics & going naked prevail for men too? And in 20 below zero temperatures? Can people at the Arctic get a dispensation? Will the Pope agree? Will Christian nuns have to go cloistered? For that matter, will seniors & the modest have to join a convent. Does it include curtains & bedding?

When does your desire to see naked women conflict with our desire to tell you to screw? Can’t you just keep watching your porn & leave the rest of us alone?

August 28 2016

This is one of the hundreds of photos of Syrian children targeted by Syrian & Russian bombers which did not go viral. The little boys here are near the debris of a building bombed by Syrian warplanes in a district of Damascus on August 12th. Twenty-seven people were killed & 100 wounded in that airstrike.

The disagreements between those who support the Assad regime & those who oppose it & between those who support US military intervention against Assad & those who oppose it are not a platonic matter to be worked out in counter-narratives & vituperative exchanges on social media.

The death toll in five years of civil war is nearly half a million people & the estimated number of refugees nearly three-million. That makes it one of the most horrific & monstrous wars of this historic period.

Instead of pissing contests on social media, what is needed is teach-ins, debates, & panels representing all the conflicting points of view so that antiwar & human rights activists around the world understand what is happening & what politically must be done to end the war. That is an imperative not resolved in mutual exchanges of insult on FB & Twitter.

(Photo from Getty Images)

August 28, 2016

Today is the 51st day the Indian army has imposed a curfew & other martial law restrictions on Kashmir. Curfews are a total lockdown placing the entire population under house arrest & restricting freedom of movement. It’s used frequently & flagrantly by the Israeli occupying army in the West Bank.

International law doesn’t adjudicate much about curfews which are collective punishment, but it does about restrictions on military occupations–as if international law restrained barbarism in any of the several countries under foreign occupation by the US, Israel, Russia, & India in Kashmir. Long-term occupation is a military norm under neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

The death toll in Kashmir is now 68 with one media source reporting up to 11,000 injured. The curfew has not deterred Kashmiris from coming out in the streets to protest. This photo is one of the many protests against the occupation in Kashmir.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo from Kashmir Global on Twitter)