Kashmiri medical student in solidarity with Syria, Yemen, the Rohingya, Central Africa:

Sometimes the weight of violence & militarism in the world overwhelms & seems so daunting because there is not yet a powerful enough international counterforce & because the old antiwar movement has been hijacked by propagandists & become fractured by war-mongering & Muslim-hating currents.

Then a group of students in occupied Kashmir shows the way & we know where the forces of the new antiwar movement will emerge. They renew our energy & confidence that humanity will fulfill its historic mission to create a world suitable for human beings led by the most oppressed who have been steeled in action by their own struggles against occupation & colonialism.

Long live Palestinian & Kashmiri Intifada.

(Photo from Rising Kashmir via Twitter wall of Syed Ali Geelani)

Kashmiri medical students in solidarity with Aleppo.

Nothing clears the toxic miasma of war-mongering, Muslim-hating, vilifying child victims of war more than the power of human solidarity–especially an expression of solidarity from Kashmiris in the sixth month of a military siege to the freedom struggle against dictatorship in Syria.

End the Indian occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

No military intervention in Syria. Down with Assad.

(Photo from Rising Kashmir via Twitter wall of Syed Ali Geelani)

So glad the US-NATO war against terrorism has militarized the entire planet & made even Christmas shopping a peril.

Last week, Snopes did a fact check on Eva Bartlett called “Victim Blaming” & found her allegations against Syrian children not verifiable. Assad supporters immediately denounced Snopes as lying-assed mainstream media. They’re so predictable.

Today Britain’s Channel 4 News did its own fact check on Bartlett’s allegations titled “Eva Bartlett’s claims about Syrian children.” Again Bartlett was busted for fabrications. No surprise there since she functions as an Assad propagandist & is likely fed stories by her handlers in the regime along with her paycheck.

We only wish Bartlett, Beeley, & the rest of them would reconsider the path they have chosen in life. They’re getting lots of media attention now but the more they talk, the more they disgrace themselves by getting caught in their own lies. Honest historical accounting will likely catch up with them in their senior years. Do they really want their legacy to be propagandists for dictatorship? Perhaps they might consider getting an honest job where they won’t have to compromise their dignity & sell out their integrity. If there’s anything left of it.

One ardent Assad supporter said as an artist he was disturbed by the assassination of the Russian ambassador in an art museum. Most people find the Syrian & Russian carpet bombing of entire cities with hundreds of thousands of people much more disturbing.

“Some have claimed that Russia’s intervention cannot be imperialism if Russia’s military was invited by the Syrian regime. By the same argument, America’s intervention in Vietnam would not have been imperialism either, invited as it was by the South Vietnamese government. These commentators believe that sovereignty resides in states, not people, and that legitimacy can still be held by those who wage a campaign of extermination against those who peacefully protested their rule (…).

The Syrian people have paid a heavy price for their desire for freedom. They have been bombed by their own government, bombed by foreign governments, and invaded by the world’s most crazed jihadists. The regime has never shown a genuine willingness to go to negotiations. Assad is not prepared to give up or share his power. All ceasefires thus far have acted as preludes to increased slaughter and displacement, carried out with nothing more than “strong condemnations” from the international community. Assad, Russia and Iran believe in a military solution to this conflict.
It is now up to people, globally, to build a sustained anti-war movement that stands with the Syrian people against all states participating in and perpetuating this conflict.”

– Leila Al-Shami, co-author of “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War”

Allow me to speak in my own voice to address the contemptible imputations against the war-traumatized children of Aleppo by Assadist propagandists, including Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, & Tim Anderson, & circulated all over social media like wild fire.

This genre of war propaganda began with mocking 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh as a staged hoax after the August 17th Russian bombing of Aleppo which killed his 10-year-old brother Ali.

One would think that at least reluctant Assadists would consider targeting children in war propaganda to be beyond the pale, especially when used to distract from Syrian & Russian carpet bombing of civilians. Regrettably they don’t.

A whole new batch of this rubbish has erupted & is now circulating on social media, including one from Sputnik News, wholly owned by the Russian government, titled “Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot of ‘Wounded Aleppo Children’.” Other Assadists say children in Syria are just ‘playing dead’ & photos to the contrary are all fake news.

This is my 50th year as an antiwar activist. I have actively opposed US wars in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama, Granada, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nicaragua & Central America, & elsewhere. Never before have I seen the suffering of children in war mocked or in any way used in propaganda. It isn’t just that they were too sacred to involve but that it would have been unthinkable to blame children who were victims of war. Assadists have no such shame.

That’s because never before has a section of the antiwar movement degenerated into enthusiastic support for war, bombing of civilians, & dictatorship as they have in Syria. They thereby separate themselves decisively from the historic traditions of anti-militarism–no matter what bizarre justifications they give for it.

The children of Syria have been subjected to daily bombing, including with barrel bombs filled with chlorine, for over five years. Why would anyone mock hundreds of thousands of small children who have suffered injures, permanent disability, war trauma & post-traumatic stress syndrome, & witnessed others buried alive in rubble or blown apart by bombs?

Call the vilification of children in Syria what it is: not just criminal & contemptible but the hallmark of stone-cold reactionary propagandists for war.

Photo is family in Aleppo.

(Photo from FB wall of ELEGANCE)

Just heard Trump’s statement about the incident in Berlin. Even though German authorities don’t know if it was terrorism or an accident, Trump said:

“ISIS & other Islamic terrorists continuously slaughter Christians in their communities & places of worship as part of their global jihad. These terrorists & their regional & worldwide networks must be eradicated from the face of the earth.”

This is no longer Trump shooting off his mouth to get right-wing votes. By now he’s been thoroughly muscled about how & who runs the US government. This is Trump speaking as president-elect for US policy.

Put his statement in the context of the Atlantic Council bipartisan proposals for an escalation of current US military policy in Syria; the US campaign against ISIS in Iraq & Libya; against the Taliban & now allegedly ISIS in Afghanistan; the ICG report claiming there is no genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar but rather growing “jihadism” among Rohingya in Arakan & among refugees.

It’s clear anti-Muslim hysteria & persecution will continue as the pivot of US-NATO military & political policy. This will have to be opposed with the massive weight of international solidarity–or we will all go down together.

This explains why Assadists, including Syrian Girl & Pepe Escobar, campaigned so vigorously for Trump. The political affinities go all the way to the bone.

Maybe the reason Assad supporters aren’t out protesting is that there’s not a lot of interest in taking down mainstream media. Or maybe they’re just tied up reading Global Research & tuning in to Alex Jones.

“Social media is cool since we get to see the rewriting of history happen right before our eyes.”

Ramah Kudaimi on Twitter