Angela Merkel is running for re-election in Germany. Playing to the extreme anti-immigration right-wing in the style of Trump, she just called for a ban on the burqa because “The full-face veil is not acceptable in our country.”

She told delegates at her party conference: “In communication between people, which is of course essential to our living together, we have to show our faces.”

Social psychologists & satirists need to have a go at this crap of merging anti-immigration policies with Islamophobia & misogyny. Something so deranged has to be mocked on the way to opposing it. One Islamophobic fruitcake on Fox news said a male or a terrorist could be hiding behind those veils. They might be good for shoplifting or sneaking your kids into the movies free too. But what the hell does that have to do with anything when there’s no criminal intent?

As for the rubbish about wanting to look at women’s faces when they talk to us? Young women have to constantly ask men to stop starring at their breasts & talk to the face. It’s a cliche we have to live with, but not comfortably. The constant complaint of older women is invisibility; no one wants to look us in the face after the wrinkles come. We don’t need a burqa to shoplift or transport a bomb. Wrinkles work just as well. They wouldn’t notice us carrying a bomb if we were in hot pants. Maybe if we really miss that “male gaze” thing we can wear a full-faced veil & hope they’ll want to look at our faces again. Yeah right!

There are always those who blither on about the veil as a symbol of male or religious dominance but they consider banning it & forcing women to unveil against their wills as a sign of women’s liberation. Thousands of women in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain led the Arab uprisings fully veiled. Maybe those who’ve never led a revolution ought to let grown-up women decide for themselves what they want to wear & what they feel oppressed by. If you’ve never taken on a dictator, what the hell do you know?

Looking at my Facebook wall for the past long while is like a house of horrors. That’s the world we live in–actually not even the half of the sorrows–& the one we’re called upon to change because all of our children deserve a life filled with love & joy.

We don’t have the option to go sour on the human race. That’s the easy way out. We don’t have the right to pull back from solidarity with those struggling against tyranny because the odds against them seem insuperable. We don’t abandon them but learn from them how to stand our ground.

We have to combine our anger at injustice with creativity & forge ways to work together for one purpose: to make the world suitable for children to live & love in.

This little guy is from east Aleppo. He’s not a “head chopping jihadist” but one of ours.

(Photo from Genocide in Syria)

The faces of Indian “democracy” in Kashmir:

From July 8th to December 1st, 2016:

–115 killed
–15,000 injured
–7,330 injured by pellets
–22 youth totally blinded
–307 youth who may lose eyesight
–1,255 youth with partial blindness
–505 women molested
–65,000 houses, shops, structures damaged
–37 schools torched
–9,700 people arrested
–608 arrested under Public Safety Act allowing indefinite detention without charges

(Photo from Freedom for Kashmir; statistics compiled by Research Section, Kashmir Media Service via Peerzada Farhan Syed)

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan just returned from a whirlwind tour of Arakan state & claims he saw no evidence of genocide against Rohingya Muslims. But it isn’t that big a fall from UN chief to singing for your supper. Ban Ki-moon never saw much either.

Plus Annan is being well remunerated by the military junta to “see no evil, hear no evil, report what he’s told.” Media continue to report that his mission is to address genocide in Arakan despite his repeated statements refuting that. You can’t usually take politicians at their word but this is a case when you should.

He told BBC there are tensions & fighting, fear & mistrust between Buddhists & Rohingya Muslims but no genocide. Well the genocide human rights activists are concerned about is that of the military junta in the second month of a rampage against Rohingya Muslims & arming right-wing nationalist Buddhists as auxiliary forces. Buddhists in Arakan are not being hunted down like animals, their villages are not being torched, they are not fleeing for their lives to Bangladesh. If some Buddhists are tense or fearful about Rohingya, it’s the same kind of angst the KKK feels toward the Black community in the US.

As former UN chief, our man Annan should be familiar with the Genocide Convention to which Burma is a signatory. How did he miss the concentration camps? The torched villages? The military occupation of Rohingya villages? How did he miss the exodus of thousands of Rohingya to Bangladesh?

The question is: whose word should we take on genocide in Arakan state? That of Suu Kyi & the junta? That of Kofi Annan? Or that of Rohingya human rights activists & refugees? Who are the ones being exterminated & fleeing & not being paid to lie or bury their heads up the keesta of the military junta?

End the genocide of Rohingya Muslims. Full human, democratic, & citizenship rights in Burma; full refugee rights elsewhere.

(Photo of Annan by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

If Aung San Suu Kyi looks progressively more deranged it is because she has seen her reputation go from astral status as a champion of human rights to the face of the Rohingya genocide by the Burmese military.

Last Friday during a visit to Singapore, she accused the “international community” (whoever the hell that would be) of stoking & drumming up resentment between Buddhists & Muslims in Arakan state & appealed for an understanding of Burma’s ethnic complexities. “It doesn’t help,” she said, “if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation in spite of the fact that there were attacks against police outposts.”

Among most politicians there are only degrees of smarmy & with that defense of genocide she advances to the astral degree of smarmy where she once reigned as human rights champion. What is going on in Arakan state is not ethnic nor religious conflict between Buddhists & Muslims–except in so far as the Burmese military incites right-wing nationalist Buddhists to rabidity, arms them & sets them loose on Rohingya communities.

The attacks against the border guards on October 9th were blamed on Rohingya Muslim insurgents linked to ISIS or al-Qaeda for which there is not a shred of evidence. “The negative side of the situation” to which she refers so coyly includes the torching of entire Rohingya villages, mass rape, mass arrests, extrajudicial executions, hundreds injured & killed, & as of this morning nearly 22,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing for their lives to Bangladesh.

She must have always been a fraud to fall from grace that fast. What she should be looking at from that “international community”–which in fact is silent as a church mouse about the genocide–is formal charges of genocide against Rohingya Muslims. But it really isn’t them she’s worried about because they have done nothing to expose or oppose the genocide for decades. She’s worried about the growth of international solidarity initiated by Rohingya refugees. Genocide is no longer Burma’s dirty secret but stands exposed before the entire world.

End the genocide of Rohingya Muslims. Full human, democratic, & citizenship rights for them in Burma. Full refugee rights for them elsewhere.

(Photo is Suu Kyi during November 2016 visit to Japan by Issel Kato/Reuters)

Reuters published this photo from yesterday with the caption: “Men exercise amongst the trees on a cold winter morning in the outskirts of Srinagar.”

Meanwhile in Srinagar, three prominent political leaders, including Syed Ali Geelani, had issued a call for a freedom march led from their respective residences to Lal Chowk square in Srinagar. It’s true the march didn’t come off because the occupying army imposed a curfew & other restrictions to prevent it. But there was a huge deployment of security forces outside the homes of two of them who prevented them from leading the march by locking the gates from outside.

One of the leaders managed to elude the authorities & attempted to lead the march but was then caught & arrested by police. A lot of action going on in Srinagar & this is what Reuters chose to publish.

This kind of coverage is not the fault of Danish Ismail, the photojournalist for Reuters. He has a considerable body of work documenting the occupation including the last 150 days of a barbarous siege. At the end of last August, police & paramilitary forces attacked his home whilst he was away & only his wife & small daughter were home. They damaged the home & terrified his family. His wife fainted & his daughter, shivering from terror, had to be taken to hospital. Ismail said a police officer had earlier warned him against covering protests.

Rather than publishing this kind of photo as a cover for the Indian military occupation, Reuters should be screaming bloody murder to Indian prime minister Modi about threats & intimidation against their reporters. Ismail should not have to fear for the safety of himself & his family for covering the occupation of Kashmir.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

Native American activists & supporters at Standing Rock didn’t buy the “fake news” that the Obama administration & US Army Corps of Engineers denied permission to the pipeline company to drill under the Missouri River. Neither did some media.

Most considered the denial a ruse to disperse thousands of activists & leave the Standing Rock Sioux to face phalanxes of North Dakota law enforcement & private security forces on their own. It was also suspected as temporizing until Trump takes office next month. Trump is an investor in the pipeline company behind the project & the CEO donated to his campaign.

The activists were given an eviction notice from the encampment for yesterday but are refusing to budge. That’s how you deal with “fake news.” You don’t demand it be banned; you just ignore it.

(Photo of Standing Rock protest near Oceti Sakowin camp by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

If there was ever a case of “fake news” it’s the alarmist campaign against it. It’s heating up to an attack on free speech.

Surely I’m not alone in observing that women are often described as “bitter” by men who disagree with them. How often do you see men called bitter in a political discussion?

To the jamokes who find us “bitter” for having minds of our own, let me just say: stuff it, bucko!

Emancipation US-style, Mosul, Iraq: this is the dead body of an alleged ISIS fighter who had been dragged by Iraqi soldiers. It is absolutely forbidden under the Geneva Accords & is considered a war crime to desecrate or in any way mutilate or abuse the bodies of enemy combatants. If the soldiers dragging the body had been US special forces rather than US-trained Iraqi soldiers, this photo would likely not have seen the light of day.

The desecration of corpses by the US military has been an issue in almost every war & is usually not exposed until years after the incidents. In one notorious incident in the Vietnam War, an army sergeant posed for pictures holding up two decapitated heads of Vietnamese. There were other incidents of US soldiers posing for photos with cut off ears & fingers. In Iraq, there were photos of US Marines pouring accelerant on Iraqis & setting them on fire, of soldiers mugging for the camera next to dead bodies, of Iraqi corpses covered with flies & one being eaten by a dog. In Afghanistan, US Marines were photographed & videoed urinating on the bodies of suspected Taliban fighters. There were many gruesome & unspeakable crimes committed by US special forces toward Taliban who surrendered.

According to a US Department of Defense briefing in October 2016, there are between 3,000 & 5,000 ISIL fighters in Mosul. In an October 2016 interview with Mosul Eye, an anti-ISIS blogger from Mosul, there are between 8,000 & 9,000 ISIL fighters. He claims ‘half of them are highly trained & the rest are either teenagers or not well trained.’ Judging from the size of the body in this photo, this person was a teenager or even younger.

Media has long been filled with headlines about ISIS recruiting & training child soldiers. Some of the experts they quote are classic Islamophobes & are likely inventing their data. One claimed ISIS recruiters target “lone, disaffected male Muslims or male Muslim converts.” Others claim ISIS is recruiting kids from overseas & offering package deals to entire families. The package deal nonsense would explain how foreign recruits under the age of 12 manage to get on airplanes & find their way to Iraq without their parent’s permission.

The recruitment, conscription, & use of child soldiers is a war crime. So if anywhere close to a half of ISIL fighters in Mosul are children—or even if only a third or fourth of them are children—then the conduct of war should be altered to protect them as victims & not treat them as enemy combatants.

Of course, all the information in this post was drawn from mainstream media so if Assad supporters are right, most of it is fake. The conclusions drawn must also then be fake.

US out of Iraq!

(Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)