Trump just signed Executive Orders to move the Keystone XL & Dakota Access Pipelines forward. He had already signed Executive Orders to roll back reproductive rights & Obamacare.

Game on! United & massive action against the rightward thrust in US politics is an imperative to defend human, civil, & democratic rights. This will be an international struggle & its model was the Women’s Marches on every continent.

As Syrian revolutionist Yassin Al Haj Saleh pointed out recently: “The world that has left Syria to shatter, has become more Syrian itself, & is walking on the path of self-destruction.” Only united, mass action will reverse that.

This powerful article by Umar Lateef Misgar is about the scope of human rights crimes in Kashmir. These monstrous crimes have gone on for decades & were never covered by international media until Kashmiri activists on social media educated us about their struggle & helped break the news blackout.

Some of these crimes, in particular the use of pellet munitions, received coverage during the nearly 6-month military offensive against Kashmiri Intifada from July to December.

Umar’s article is a comprehensive overview of human rights violations faced by Kashmiris. Please read & share it to educate & strengthen active solidarity with the Kashmiri freedom struggle.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2017/01/24/trampling-human-rights-in-kashmir/

Activists are initiating a campaign addressed to the #UnitedNations about the plebiscite promised to Kashmir. One needn’t believe the UN will be the agency of self-determination to participate. They ask Kashmiri supporters around the world to share the status below in support to the Kashmiri struggle (& tag the UN):

@United Nations, people of Kashmir were promised a plebiscite. It’s been 69 years! How many more innocent people need to die at the hands of Indian Forces before Kashmiris are allowed to exercise their right to self-determination? Let there be no more blood on the streets of Kashmir. Let them live. Let peace prevail.

#KashmirReferendum #Kashexit #StandWithKashmir #FreeKashmir

Ather Zia: “Kashmiris have given a referendum in blood.”

Painting by Rollie Mukherjee

Turns out Eva Bartlett is pithy with a phrase & chock-full of earthy wisdom: “History will reveal those who were on the side of justice & those who were hyenas, feasting on the garbage of #FakeNews.”

Propaganda doesn’t get better than that.

During an interview last year, Assad said he lost no sleep over the deaths of 400,000 Syrians or the situation of millions of Syrian refugees. When pushed about the deaths of children killed in Aleppo he laughed off the question. Shades of Madeleine Albright, another psycho killer who brushed off the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi kids as “worth it” to accomplish US policy goals in Iraq, the fruits of which are ISIS.

Being criminally insane appears to be the hallmark of politicians in the barbaric phase of capitalism. But then of course, it was always the hallmark of dictators.

Now it’s being gossiped by Russian insiders that the mental health of Assad is on shaky ground. They’re insinuating & spreading rumors that he’s “exhausted” from the psychological pressures & tensions of carpet bombing civilians for almost six years. They say he’s even developing a nervous tick in his left eye as a result.

“Exhaustion” of course does not mean Assad suffers any remorse at the horror or scale of his crimes but only that mass murder has kept him from more pleasurable pursuits. That tick could just as well come from keeping one eye open all night lest he be murdered in his sleep. A dictator can never be too careful.

Whatever the cause, the tick won’t be an aesthetic problem. It’ll go well with the twisted sneer & his likeness to a predatory bird & it will all still shake out haute couture in Armani. Actually it won’t be a problem at all since you can’t tell a photo from a caricature of Assad.

The tick won’t be a political problem either as long as the checks keep going out to Beeley & Bartlett & the even smarmier vicar from England who hopes to set up a congregation in Syria after they’ve driven all the Muslims out.

The Russian insiders didn’t express much sympathy for Assad. He doesn’t appear to be particularly endearing even to his closest allies. He’s probably a pretty lonely guy. Mass murderers usually are.

If all goes well that nervous tick will be connected by the vagus nerve to some internal organ that’s ready to croak from exhaustion & they can just bury the sucker.

Bangladeshi garment workers play a particularly important & combative role in opposing the predations of sweatshop economics. There have been gruesome crimes committed against labor organizers in Bangladesh, including mutilation & murder. This is a petition to release 11 union leaders & activists illegally detained in Dhaka.

Please take a moment to sign & share the petition. We can’t stand on the front lines with them but signing the petition is effective in letting officials know they are being watched & that the 11 activists do not stand alone.

https://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=3310

Assadists are either libertarians moving in the direction of fascism or they have already arrived. They may be at different stages in that process but that’s where their politics inexorably lead. There are historical antecedents to this phenomenon.

Their intellectual habits are what give them away: suspicion & distrust of everything & everyone; profoundly cynical & nihilist; speculations & sloppy research in place of rigorous study; hate-mongering & contempt for working people. As they become more committed to those bad habits, they become more deeply irrational, obscurantist, & fanatic. We’re able to watch that process work its way out on social media.

The election of Trump has been a turning point because those who previously were reluctant or sly about supporting Assad & Trump are more emboldened to do so openly & proclaim it progressive without batting an eyelash. They no longer mask woman-hating, Muslim & Jewish-hating, or xenophobia but justify it with gruesome alarmism about head-choppers, who they fetishize, accusations of Soros funding, or talk about Israeli expansionism. It’s not over the top to say much of it is deranged.

It’s hard to consider that antiwar activists & socialists I came of age with & Palestinian solidarity activists I’ve campaigned with, now unite in the Hands Off Syria Coalition with Assadists & paid propagandists like Beeley & Bartlett (who believes reptilian Jewish bankers rule the world).

Some may not understand this, but seeing trusted allies you stood with through all sorts of political battles now cross into a zone of obscurantism, conspiracy, hate-mongering, & counter-revolution is a surreal experience. It’s like the invasion of the body snatchers. Only worse.

It’s not disagreeing that’s the problem but the character of the disagreement. You can’t be close again with those who base their politics on hate. What’s to talk about if you don’t share the same respect for human life? Affinities are damaged beyond repair when you side with revolution & they with counter-revolution. That’s just the way it is.

Your loyalty to friendship makes you want to fight for them but this is where chickens come home to roost. They never believed much in the intellects of women & the chances of persuading them are a snowball’s chance in hell.

What, no Women’s Marches in Russia? Does that mean it’s a worker’s paradise under Putin capitalism?

Demeaning or ridiculing Melania Trump personally isn’t how feminists operate. But no one’s gonna play stupid either. She’s married to a low life pig who is already going after women’s reproductive rights & Obamacare. If she ever enters the political arena to justify any of that, she’s in our cross hairs. That’s how politics work.