It’s often said that those who won’t engage in pissing contests with Assad supporters are dodging the arguments advanced because we’re unable to answer them. There’s nothing compelling or cogent that’s worth dodging. It’s propaganda & adheres to that model of persuasion: name calling (“head-chopping jihadists”); fear mongering (tapping into Muslim-hating & paranoia about MSM); & bandwagon politics (all the really trendy anti-imperialists support bombing civilians to defend Syrian national sovereignty.)

The top stories harped on by Assad propagandists & their fellow travelers include: vilifying the White Helmet rescue workers to take attention away from Syrian & Russian bombing; discrediting baby Omran as staged to deny children are suffering under that bombing; portraying all opposition to Assad as US-NATO & jihadist head-choppers to deny the existence of a popular, on-going revolution. How does one politically answer that crap? How do you chase a chimera? To address such scurrilous claims, one has to probe the psychological depths of Islamophobic angst along with the venal motivations of propagandists when not everyone has the stomach for dredging such malignancies.

As Syria & Russia resume carpet bombing in Syria, Assad propagandists & their fellow travelers are out in force justifying the bombing attacks on civilians in Wadi Barada by claiming Al-Qaeda forces from the area poisoned the water supply to Damascus & need to be taken out. Every such accusation has to be vetted which Assad supporters won’t do because fear-mongering, boogie-man politics is part of Assadist appeal. But serious-minded people not driven by infantile angst will investigate because it’s more necessary to investigate the reality of military operations than to plumb the psychological cesspool of hating on Muslims.

Bellingcat is a useful resource of citizen journalists who investigate stories using satellite imagery & other such tools available on the internet. Today, they posted their investigation titled “Wadi Barada: What Happened to Damascus’s Water?” One can question & refute that carefully sourced investigation but it cannot be rebutted with vituperations against “jihadists” without some documentation. Enough of that baloney.

https://www.bellingcat.com/…/wadi-barada-happened-damascus…/

This photo is from east Aleppo after Syrian & Russian airstrikes in September 2016 because many of the bombing videos from Wadi Barada are not verified. Is this image the principled antiwar activist’s vision of a freedom struggle?

(Photo from Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Any personal reviews of the movie “Heart of a Lion” with Dev Patel?

It’s based on an extraordinary true story: a little boy begging at a train station in India gets caught on a train & lost thousands of miles away in another city. He eventually ends up in an orphanage & is adopted by Australians but remains deeply haunted by memories of his mom & older brother & wants to find them. As a young man, using satellite imagery on the internet, he somehow finds his way back to them.

A TV interview with the real fellow, who now lives in Tasmania, showed footage of his return home to his mom & learning that his older brother who got separated from him at the train station was killed that very day by a train.

Is that an extraordinary story, or what? Is the movie worthy of the story or is it rendered maudlin?

We almost never hear the term “sheeple” on Facebook anymore. Have the users smartened up or are they among the 10,000 people on my block list?

Elderly homeless man in Yemen:

When the history of this epoch is written it can only be titled the barbaric phase of capitalism: millions of homeless children & elderly; millions of children workers; millions of refugees; billions dispossessed & forced to live in slums; endless wars & occupations. It will be known as an era when human life had no value at all.

Perhaps the worst things this era has done is undermine the belief that working people have the capacity to change the world & put us at odds with each other. Overcoming those problems involves conflict because the problems are domination & subordination through class inequality, racism, misogyny, & other social antagonisms.

Differences in politics are unavoidable & stressful. Sometimes they’re decisive so they have to be battled out because reality is complex & the stakes are high. Competing ideas express competing social interests. Not everyone has the stomach for political dispute; some avoid it like the plague. But everyone can learn from them. They also serve who do not throw the punches.

It should be said that intolerance for trolls on social media is not an attempt to short circuit the necessary debates. It’s pest control.
We’re going to be slugging Syria out for awhile. It’s a harsh dispute & the most important for a long time. It’s not a thing where you can wing it; you have to sift the arguments. But it’s also not inscrutable & any attempts to make it so derive from the guilty parties involved attempting to deceive.

Stick with principles & we’ll be safe even if don’t understand all of a complex war: no foreign military intervention of any kind by any country. Stop the bombing.

There’s a fine line between Assad supporters trolling your posts & the Zombie Apocalypse. It might be good to reiterate the rules of engagement for the latter so you can use them for the former.

–Never engage with one if you can avoid it. Deflect every overture, even if they pretend to like one of your posts. If they try to trap you into a conversation, run for it or “block ’em Danno.”

–Never underestimate one; don’t be fooled by their robotic recitations from RT or Global Research. They can burst out of hiding behind a timid persona & suck your brain out in the blink of an eye.

–If necessary, seek medical attention after any encounter. The zombie virus can enter your body through the smallest opening in your skin–very much like the virus they get from reading MSM.

If you end up marrying one, you’re on your own. May you RIP.

Where on Planet Armageddon might this be?

This conflagration is in Valparaiso, Chile, about 60 miles (100 km) from Santiago. It’s a port city with a metropolitan population of one million people. A raging fire broke out there last night which burned down many homes & forced hundreds to evacuate.
Investigators haven’t determined the cause of the fire but say the fire was fueled by trash mounds dumped in ravines that run throughout the city as well as by the flammable wooden structures of the slums.

The Chilean Interior Minister made a public statement blaming it on people who throw their trash into the gullies. He neglected to mention that under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet the entire sanitation system in Chile was privatized, a hallmark of neoliberal urban economics. That means it does not exist for the slums or poorer neighborhoods & has not for nearly 40 years.

This is neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

(Photo by Christian Miranda/AFP/Getty Images)

The barbaric phase of capitalism:

This overcrowded raft, 36 nautical miles (67 km/42 mi) off the coast of Libya, was drifting out of control yesterday with 112 African refugees aboard. Among the passengers were two pregnant women & five children, including a baby.

That Italian naval vessel behind it apparently thinks it’s on a Mediterranean cruise while the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms rescue ship (a private rescue operation) is attempting to reach the raft to rescue the refugees. All of the 112 people were taken on board the Proactiva ship, an old fishing vessel.

There’s a question hovering in the air about the sailors working those European & NATO ships deployed there to turn back refugees. They endanger the lives of the refugees & must sometimes watch them drown. Do they sustain the same mental health issues like PTSD, the addiction problems, the suicide rate, the violence problems that war veterans do?

Open the damn borders. Immigration is a human right. Asylum is an imperative of civilization.

(Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

“”Rothschild banksters” is a dog whistle, cult code, or secret handshake for those who believe that “the main enemy” are the Jews. Remember what August Bebel said about antisemitism. Not just fools. Renegades.”

from Henry Lowi

PS: Bebel said “Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.”