Max Blumenthal made quite a splash in October with his two-part hatchet job on White Helmet rescue workers in Syria. The articles were published in Alternet, considered a progressive alternative media source. His primary charge to discredit the White Helmets was their funding sources, including by USAID.

Blumenthal is a frequent writer for Alternet & since he’s so scrupulous about funding would be advised to check out its funding sources if he considers that the sole measure of corruption. Between 2001-2005 the top three financial backers of Alternet were the Ford Foundation (which the CIA operates through), the David & Lucille Packard Foundation (involved in population control/eugenics programs), & the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

As of 2014, Alternet kept many of its financial backers secret & there isn’t much information on other foundations listed except their connections to millionaire Democrats. One of them, The New World Foundation, was once chaired by Hillary Clinton. Still included among the publicly acknowledged financial backers is the Nathan Cummings Foundation which should be quite significant to Blumenthal since it has a public partnership with the New Israel Fund, a US-based Zionist organization very active in Israel.

Maybe our man Max should explain to us how the questionable funding of Alternet differs from the funding of the White Helmets?

One of the issues never sufficiently elaborated is the impact of immigration on families: the separation of parents from children; children’s sense of abandonment; not being able to attend family members who are ill or who die for lack of papers to travel; losing family members en route by being separated from them or from capsized boats & other hazards.

There are many stories of Central American & Mexican children left behind by parents who became undocumented immigrants to find work. Many of those bereft children travel as unaccompanied minors to reunite with their parents even if they don’t know where they are in the US. Most will end up in US detention facilities. If they are reunited with parents who often had more children here, the older kids will have unresolved resentments to work out. Thousands of undocumented immigrants deported under Obama are separated from their children who are placed in a dysfunctional, bloated, & sometimes dangerous foster care system.

These people are on the Tijuana, Mexico side of the barrier wall between Mexico & the US talking to relatives on the US side near San Diego. The young man shows the poignancy of these separations caused by barbaric & racist immigration policies.

Immigration & refugee rights are a child & family welfare issue.
Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Reuters stringer)

Presuming—to the annoyance of many—on my longevity in politics, let me say that one of the most important things for serious political people is to never talk through your hat, never develop convictions about an issue without thorough investigation. Intuitions & suspicions shouldn’t be ignored but they are never sufficient as evidence & must always be investigated because often those intuitions turn out to be nothing more than projected prejudices. That requires vetting every source of information.

Too many progressives today have been influenced by libertarian analytical methods: suspicions, paranoia, class biases against working people, conspiracy thinking, & most regrettably the anti-Semitic belief that Jews & Israel run the world. Global Research is the epitome of that method though it takes distance from the most egregious expressions of anti-Semitism. It isn’t that libertarians don’t investigate issues but when reality doesn’t fit their prejudices, they deny reality or invent a new one.

Behind the libertarian method is disdain for working people as agents of social change. They believe massive, popular uprisings are all orchestrated by nefarious elite forces like the CIA & Mossad. So for Global Research, the Arab uprisings of 2011 involving millions of people in several countries were nothing more than CIA-orchestrated street theater. The journal takes particular vengeance toward the Syrian uprising, relying on Muslim-hating prejudices & orientalist beliefs that Assad is just too stylish & western to be a murderous dictator.

(This comes up because I was asked about an article from the Denver Guardian circulating on social media claiming an “FBI agent suspected in Clinton email links was found dead in an apparent murder-suicide.” There is no such newspaper as the Denver Guardian. It’s a planted story.
The issues involved in accepting such reports are not just significant but life & death when they involve the issue of war & revolution against dictatorship in Syria.)

How does CBS “60 Minutes” think they can be even remotely credible having Lara Logan do war reporting from Mosul, Iraq? She is openly phobic about Muslims, has publicly war-mongered against Afghanistan. Pakistan, & Libya, & in general has discredited herself as a reporter. In 2013 she was even forced to take a leave of absence for false reporting about Libya.

In a notorious 2012 war-mongering speech, she ranted about the Taliban & al Qaeda exactly as pro-Assad supporters do about “throat-cutting jihadists,” claiming they “want to destroy the West” & called for the US military to amp up the wars against them–or as one audience member characterized her speech: “Shoot ’em, bomb ’em, fuck ’em. They will kill your children.”

On the “60 Minutes” segment tonight, Logan & the CBS crew, embedded with Iraqi special forces on the outskirts of Mosul, were attacked by an ISIS suicide bomber & shot at by ISIS forces. Maybe. Maybe not. The war in Iraq is not all about Lara Logan or her fearless grandstanding against terrorists. Unfortunately, her reporting lends credence to conspiracy theories & does nothing to explain what ISIS or the war against them is all about. CBS should can her.

Made a bad decision yesterday & let my Schnauzer Sophie & three-legged Chihuahua Franky be adopted by a guy who turned out to be less than straightforward about his history with dogs. As soon as I drove away after dropping them off, I knew it was all wrong & had to be undone. Enough of being outsmarted by a Schnauzer but no one rescues dogs to put them back in harm’s way.

Still scheming how to get them back a couple hours later, I drove past the fellow’s house & saw Franky running in the unfenced yard on a busy intersection with no supervision. Franky lost his leg getting hit by a car & loves to run away as Sophie’s sidekick. The kid’s had enough trouble for one lifetime & doesn’t need more.

All thoughts of diplomacy vanished. I piled Franky in the car, marched up to the door, feigned a little pathos about missing my dogs & said I wanted them back. The guy said he didn’t even know Franky was outside.

You can say I’m anthropomorphizing, but believe me, they were as happy to come home as I was to take them.

For those who don’t realize human beauty is timeless & universal: Vietnamese seniors of the Vietnam War generation.

Réhahn is a renowned portrait photographer from France based in central Vietnam since 2011.

This is my post to the defense campaign of Khurram Parvez in a new photo/selfie campaign to express solidarity & demand his release.

I had to comb my hair, wipe off the dog hairs, & pour on a little lipstick, but as you see, the sign is a homemade job. Nothing fancy is required in this campaign. Only a desire to stand with him & with Kashmiris in this period of crisis.

Please consider adding your own gorgeous mug to this campaign by posting a photo on his wall.

#ReleaseKhurramParvezNow
#IamKhurramParvez
#WeAreAllKhurramParvez

A Modest Proposal for a Selfie or Photo Campaign to Free Khurram Parvez:

Kashmiri human rights leader Khurram Parvez has now been in administrative detention for 50 days. He was arrested not for any criminal misconduct but because of his central role in investigating, exposing, campaigning against human rights crimes by the Indian occupying army–especially on the issue of forcible disappearance.

An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 cases of enforced disappearances, most of them male, have been reported in Kashmir since 1989. The monstrous character of this crime leaves families profoundly bereft with a grief that cannot be resolved & will not be exhausted by times passage. Justice for the disappeared was Khurram’s commitment.

Khurram’s legal team from the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society is working through the tediums of the court system for his release while his defense campaign is appealing to international human rights groups & those of the disappeared to campaign for his immediate, unconditional release. Most are posting photos on his defense wall of rallies & placards demanding his release.

Kashmiri activists on social media are being monitored & hundreds are being arrested & administratively detained in Kashmir. It’s an important time for human rights advocates around the world to answer the clarion call for solidarity–& in a very simple & public way.

It would be very powerful if people would take a selfie of themselves, with or without others, or a photo of others holding up a handwritten sign (nothing fancy-schmancy is required) saying “Free Khurram Parvez” which you would then post to his defense wall. The point is to keep his defense active & to take it international.

This is the wall where you would post your selfie:

https://www.facebook.com/freekhurram/?pnref=story

Reposting this from April 8th, exactly three months before the brutal siege began in Kashmir. It reports the violent character of the military occupation & also the breadth of resistance to it. Those in the trees are watching the funeral cortege/protest of Waseem Malla & Naseer Pandit, two activists murdered in a staged encounter with soldiers.

This haunting photo taken by Javaidd Naikoo has since been used on the cover of a book by Shahnaz Bashir & is referenced in a valuable article by Alana Hunt about the struggle in Kashmir. As one who watches photojournalism daily, I consider this photo one of the most powerful, artistically & politically, that I have ever seen.

Article by Alana Hunt:  http://www.4a.com.au/4a_papers_article/alana-hunt/

Congratulations to Javaidd.

*********

This remarkable photo was taken yesterday at the funeral procession of Kashmiri activists Waseem Malla & Naseer Pandit attended by over 70,000 people. Those in the trees are trying to view the passing cortege/protest. The two young men were killed by Indian troops in a shootout 55 km/34 miles from Srinagar. The murders set off massive anti-occupation protests in the district where a police vehicle was torched & many protesters injured in clashes with Indian occupying forces. Businesses & shop owners observed a complete shutdown for the mourning.

The Indian army’s version of the shootout follows the same script as all the other executions: two known militants were hiding out in a house; the Indian army trapped them by cordoning off the area; the two tried to escape ‘by opening indiscriminate fire’ & were killed in a field outside the village by return fire from soldiers. No explanation for how they got out of the house where they were trapped, past the cordon, & into the field outside the village.

We’re expected to sympathize with the murders of these “wanted terrorists” by hearing they were members of a guerrilla group. But it’s even more common for the Indian army in Kashmir to fire live bullets & tear gas at unarmed protesters, causing countless deaths & serious injuries. Countless stone-throwers, part of the Kashmir Intifada, are also assaulted & arrested. So it doesn’t seem to matter to the Indian occupying army whether Kashmiri youth carry a gun (allegedly), a rock, or just march against the occupation.

The alibi for summary executions of youth in Kashmir is canned–just like Israeli claims that every Palestinian they execute charged a soldier or civilian with a knife.

Our deepest respect to the two young men. May they Rest In Peace. Our fullest solidarity with the struggle for Kashmiri self-determination.

(Photo by Kashmiri journalist Javaidd Naikoo)

Got an email from the pro-Assad Syria Solidarity Movement asking me to call a Russian embassy & express gratitude for their support to Syria: “Russia needs your encouragement to continue to help Syrians.”

You don’t have to understand Russian capitalism, the character of militarism or the problems of carpet bombing civilians to find that deplorable & groveling before power. Principled antiwar activists demand the end of bombing civilians & cities. If they ever find themselves expressing gratitude for bombing, they’ve crossed over to the dark side. That’s what happens if you believe Russian bombers & special forces are freedom fighters in Syria.