They might be able to nail Trump for high treason tweeting even before he takes office.

And no, Russian hacking did not throw the election. Like it or not, Clinton won but the oligarchs stole the election from her.

How did the Syrian uprising become dominated by jihadists?

Syria is complicated. That’s why you need to read Syrians who were part of the 2011 revolution & witnessed & participated in the course of events. Why the hell would you read only propagandists for the regime who came from nowhere & believe reptilian Jewish bankers & jihadists are the problem in the world? You need to have your head examined if that’s how you function politically.

This is an article by Loubna Mrie, a Syrian revolutionist now in exile in the US, which addresses the very important issue of violent armed extremists in Syria–minus the Muslim-hating rubbish that dominates Assadist propaganda.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-did-the-syrian-uprising-become-dominated-by-jihadists#page1

You can read it along with this analysis by Yassin Al Haj Saleh, a Syrian revolutionist now in exile in Turkey, on the origins & development of ISIS:

http://www.yassinhs.com/2016/11/18/the-genealogy-of-isis/

The arrest of Tanveer Ahmad War in Baramulla district, Kashmir

Tanveer Ahmad War (Kashmir Reader) Jn 14 2017

Last October 21st, government forces arrested 29-year-old Tanveer Ahmad War in Baramulla district, about 34 miles (54 km) from Srinagar after an FIR had been filed against him with the police.

An FIR is a criminal complaint lodged by a victim or material witness to a crime. The police can only register the FIR, arrest & initiate criminal proceedings against the accused for a “cognizable offense” like rape, murder, theft, kidnapping, or assault. He was granted bail by the court on that charge but not released because another FIR had been filed against him. On December 8th, the court ordered him released on bail on the second charge & again he was not released.

In an illegal move similar to what they pulled on Khurram Parvez, police moved him to a jail in Kupwara district, about 22 miles (36 km) from Baramulla, & detained him under the Public Safety Act (PSA). PSA is an outrageous legal maneuver to legitimize repression & occupation. It is used by Israel against Palestinians, including children, & was used in apartheid South Africa. It allows the government to indefinitely detain activists on vague charges like endangering the security of the state or public disorder. In the case of Tanveer Ahmad War, it allows the courts to dodge criminal allegations which are almost certainly fabricated. You wouldn’t hold a man on an unspecified charge of public disorder if you could nail him for rape, murder, or another serious felony.

Tanveer’s wife & family are aggressively hounding authorities to get him released because it’s a travesty of justice & as an amputee with multiple ailments, his health is jeopardized by incarceration. According to documents his family obtained from the court in Baramulla, he is accused of “vitiating the peaceful atmosphere & creating unrest that will ultimately lead to increasing violence” & for “carrying out antisocial activities.”

What happened to the felony charges? Well the Baramulla magistrate claimed Tanveer used his motorized tricycle provided by the government as an assault weapon to ‘advocate secessionist ideology & actively disturb the public order.’ When the magistrate completes his court tenure he should consider a second career in stand-up comedy or writing propaganda for Assad.

It isn’t shocking that a disabled activist would be arrested & detained since disability rights activists have defied marginalization & played prominent roles in the Arab Spring, in anti-austerity protests across Europe, & in the Occupy movement. They’re in the thick of things. The concern of his wife & family is the illegality of his detention & that he receive proper medical attention in prison.

According to Human Rights Watch, authorities in Kashmir detained over 400 activists, including children, between July 9th & October 6th of 2016.

End the occupation. End the PSA. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Story & photo from Kashmir Reader)

The case of Edward Lee Elmore

Edward Lee Elmore and Diana Hold Jan 13 2017

There was a TV show about the extraordinary case of Edward Lee Elmore, a 23-year-old man arrested in 1982 in Greenwood, South Carolina for the rape & murder of a wealthy 75-year-old woman. Elmore was Black, a high-school dropout, had a learning disability, & was one of 11 kids from a poor family.

Elmore’s only connection to her was that he’d washed windows for her a couple weeks before the murder. He was fingered to the police by the most likely perpetrator, a neighbor romantically involved with the victim, the first person on the scene of the crime, & as a white city councilman a person with high social standing relative to Elmore.

Framed up with planted evidence, Elmore was given court-appointed lawyers, & sustained massive prosecutorial misconduct. He was given the death sentence & spent 30 years in prison, 29 of them on death row. In 2010 he was taken off death row when his legal team successfully argued he was not eligible for execution as a person with learning disabilities (what the court calls “mental retardation,” a term rejected as derogatory by those with disability) in accordance with a US Supreme Court decision.

The only reason Elmore’s case became prominent & that he was eventually released is because in 1993 a law school student named Diana Holt reviewed his case & became convinced he was innocent. She had herself spent time in jail for armed robbery & became a jail house lawyer. When she got out she went to law school after encouragement by a prosecutor who admired her work.

Holt was dogged & committed to the Elmore case & described the misogynist bullying the prosecution subjected her to, especially over her own criminal past as a 17-year-old runaway. She’s tough. She stood up to it. Over the next several years she got the Cornell Death Penalty Project involved in Elmore’s defense & together they litigated despite several legal setbacks until Elmore was released in 2012. He was 53 years-old.

To show the scope of prosecutorial malice, even after years of legal procedures showing Elmore could not have committed the crime, the state of South Carolina refused to exonerate him & he was released on an Alford Plea where the state claims there is evidence against him but they are unable to prove his guilt.

Raymond Bonner, the NY Times reporter covering the case, wrote
“Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong” about the case.

Photo is Edward Lee Elmore with Diana Holt next to him at his release.

(Photo from AP)

Interview with Yassin Al-Haj Saleh

Yassin Al-Haj Saleh (2) Jan 14 2017

There’s so much propaganda stuff on social media about Syria that’s deranged & politically banal. So here’s a chance to read a Syrian revolutionist, someone who spent 16 years in Assad’s gulag, someone who was part of the 2011 revolution against Assad, & whose beloved wife & brother were forcibly disappeared three years ago.

It’s an excellent interview. A necessary one. An informed voice.

http://aljumhuriya.net/en/syrian-refugees/interview-with-yassin-al-haj-saleh

Slum fire in Navotas, Manila: the deadly intersection of neoliberal economics & the vigilante drug war

Navotas slum fire (Bullit Marquez:AP) Jan 13 2017

These slum residents in Navotas, a Manila suburb bordering Manila Bay, are sifting through the debris of a fire on Tuesday that left over 1,600 families homeless. Navotas is considered one of the worst slum areas in Manila & like other slums in other districts has been repeatedly hit with fires.

Fire forensics are not reported, or more likely never done, but officials always recite the same list of causes: cooking accidents, faulty or pirated power lines, flammable building materials, overcrowding, piles of recycling materials gathered from dumpsites, or cause unknown. Residents usually suspect arson & say fire trucks arrive late & when they do often lack water hydrants.

The resident’s suspicions are more than justified. These slum fires in Manila are part of scorched earth neoliberal economics which dispossessed hundreds of thousands of rural workers & farmers, replaced them with agribusiness plantations, & forced them to relocate into urban slums. Now, neoliberal urban policies are mandating privatization of public lands where many of the slums are built & forcing residents into relocating or homelessness. That’s why there are dozens of slum fires in Manila every year.

As part of the privatization policies, the Philippine Supreme Court ordered government officials in 2008 to demolish slum dwellings all along Manila Bay so multinational investors could build resorts, upscale shopping malls & condominiums, golf courses, free trade zones. Then Philippine president Aquino & other officials made it clear they intended aggressive action to clear out the tens of thousands of slum residents & relocate them to rural areas with no possibility for employment. Because the resistance of slum residents to evictions has been so forceful against bulldozers & riot police, officials long ago took the line of least resistance by resorting to arson.

This fire in Navotas highlights the deadly intersection between scorched earth economics & Duterte’s vigilante war on drugs. Police & fire officials made a mockery of forensics by claiming within only 12 hours of the fire that initial investigation showed the cause was a candle left unattended by drug users during a methamphetamine session. The Navotas police chief said many of the residents were drug users & pushers, that the slum was considered Manila’s “most notorious community,” & that it had become a safe haven for criminals & murderers to hide out. As a result, the area was being cordoned, residents would not be allowed to return & would be forcibly relocated. Usually residents with no place to go just rebuild on the same site. Now the drug war justifies forcible removal.

The published kill list of 520 drug war victims in the first seven days of Duterte’s reign of terror (July 1st to 7th, 2016) included 17 victims from Navotas. When the year 2016 ended, there were well over 6,000 victims, likely a very large number from Navotas although the figures are not available.

(Photo by Bullit Marquez/AP)

How dare the Syrian revolution contradict the pantheon of western gurus!?

It must seem the epitome of arrogance for Syrian revolutionists & their supporters to disagree with almost the entire pantheon of western gurus: Noam Chomsky, Patrick Cockburn, Tariq Ali, Robert Fisk, Chris Hedges, Vijay Prashad, John Pilger, Glenn Greenwald, Glen Ford, Seamus Milne, Seymour Hersh, Ajamu Baraka. After all, these guys–& it is noticeable that they are all men–are the left intellectual avant-garde of the past 40 years, even outside the west.

The problem with gurus is that they are not infallible & they don’t speak ex cathedra for “the left.” Sometimes when you scratch below the surface of their analyses, you learn they’re not that left at all. For every one of those celebrity journalists & authors there is an entire catalog of serious misjudgments long before they fell apart over Syria.

It’s no surprise they can’t distinguish between revolution & counter-revolution in Syria since not a one of them has any real credentials in that regard. They operate in elite circles, are accustomed to deference, & likely have no understanding at all of working people nor any respect for our capacities to enter history & change it. Like the lilliputian socialist groups who support Assad & carpet bombing of civilians, their writings reflect theoretical torpor & political inertia where they can no longer tell the difference between a political analysis of Syria & the conspiracy mongering of Global Research, complete with “reptilian Rothschild banksters.”

If the Islamophobia & anti-Semitism of Assadist apologia, including that of these gurus, doesn’t hit you in the face, if the demonizing of rescue workers & small children doesn’t sicken you, if marching for Assad & Russia with fascists & libertarians who believe “jihadists” & Jewish people are the problems in this world doesn’t horrify you, then maybe it’s time to accept that you were only on the left by a misunderstanding. The bandwagon is not a reliable guide in politics.