Civilians in Mosul, Iraq fleeing from bombers & ground fighting between Iraqi & US-coalition forces against ISIS fighters:
This is the model for fighting ‘terrorism’ employed by the US-NATO & Russia & all their allies: carpet bombing cities with hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, including elderly, infirm, children, pregnant women.

The problem with this model is that it kills, disables, traumatizes, & displaces tens of thousands more civilians than it does ‘terrorists’ & doesn’t do a damn thing to end terrorism. The civilians don’t feel so liberated so much as they know they’re the targets.

There is another model: take your armies & your bombers & get the hell out. Arm Iraqis & Syrians so they can defend themselves.

The only principled antiwar demands:
–The immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces;
–Stop the bombing;
–Stop supporting dictators & calling it national liberation.

(Photo by Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters)

Two  little sisters in a Gaza winter keeping each other warm.

(Photo thanks to Mohammed E Jaber from 2015)

Samina Faiz & I have been researching land grabs & development projects in Arakan state, Myanmar focusing on how that relates to the genocide against Rohingya. The country under the military dictatorship has a violent history with many of the 135 non-Burman ethnic groups & with non-Rohingya Muslims but are targeting Rohingya for ethnic cleansing. We’re trying to understand all that.

Both of us had the same reaction after several hours of reading this stuff: the history is very dark. We were both struck that the military which denies them citizenship & won’t call them Rohingya uses them for forced labor, typically one day a week of heavy work on military or government projects & a night of sentry duty.

Another article reminded me of something I had forgotten from the 2012 military offensive against Rohingya. The Thai junta would take flimsy boats of fleeing Rohingya back out to sea & abandon them. In 2015, they would not allow thousands in drifting boats to even land. It’s as horrific to read about now as it was then.

Those dark forces have to be answered with battalions of international solidarity. Aung San Suu Kyi & the military have to be exposed & they have to go. Along with the Thai junta.

Our fullest solidarity with the Rohingya.

One would think after writing about the Rohingya since 2012 the confusion over whether to call it Burma or Myanmar would have piqued some curiosity from me. Slow on the uptake, it took till today before I decided to clarify the matter.

It turns out the military junta that took over in 1962 & 1988 coup d’etats changed it to Myanmar from Burma in 1989. Human rights & democracy activists & groups don’t accept the legitimacy of an unelected regime, including in making a name change. But it’s reported they don’t make the name change a central issue in their campaigns.

Formally the junta transitioned to a civil government in 2011 but that’s baloney. They rule with the same iron-fist now behind the human rights face of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Khurram Parvez resumed his work as program coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) after his release from prison on November 30th.

This is an article describing & recognizing him for his human rights work: http://withkashmir.com/…/khurram-parvez-tireless-human-rig…/

This is the link to the JKCCS website where you can pull down the Reports menu to read often gruesome, but extremely important documentation of human rights crimes under the military occupation.

http://www.jkccs.net/

Rohingya Blogger is a tough-minded, no-nonsense analyst always worth reading. He/she can be followed on Twitter, FB, or at the website.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/rohingyablogger
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Facebook tells me I’ve been active since March 2009. I’ve piled up more enemies in those 8 years than in the entire rest of my life. I didn’t like a one of them. But then again I’ve met some of the best & best looking people in the world.