Is he overwhelmed with his own idiocies? Tired of the protesters handing him his ass? Or just constipated?

There’s so much going on in the world that it’s been months since I’ve had time for a Betty Windsor update. That needs to be corrected. The specter of feudalism still haunts Europe & other countries (come to think about it, mostly Europe & US military allies) making mooching off the body politic a bad habit long past its historic shelf life & a model for the barbaric phase of capitalism. We can’t tell if we’re going forward or backwards in history.

Update on Betty coming up.

Probably the thing humanity (how dare I presume to speak for our whole species!) wants most is to believe in our potential to make the world a suitable place for human beings to live. It seems our most glorious struggles like the Arab Spring get thwarted & there is that thunderous cacophony of cynics & misanthropes to mock our every aspiration & attempt.

Defeat is a temporary state; setbacks are things we learn from. We’re living in the barbaric phase of capitalism so we’re running out of options fast because if their wars don’t get us first, their fracking & cyclones will.

It would be good if we only had Cédric Herrou stories–which speak to the best in most of us–but alas we also have Assad & Trump tales. We have to elaborate the latter, not to dwell on the negative, condemn, or God forbid, depress, but as part of working out how to move forward, how to unite, & around what program. It’s a necessary part of clarifying & movement building.

Humanity doesn’t live by inspiration & indignation alone but always needs wise strategies for kicking ass & social transformation. Possible we won’t succeed, possible we will. If we “dream high,” as the father said of Kashmiri kids, our chances increase exponentially.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQni3qn6GIU

Assad doesn’t have the most gripping rhetorical style among dictators but his interview with journalist Michael Isikoff is worth a listen. It seems enthusiasm for writing Assad’s obituary was premature. He appears well & without that anxiety twitch reported by Russians last month. Pity.

Isikoff didn’t pull any punches & asked the most important questions: (1) about the Amnesty report on torture & hanging executions in Assad’s gulag; (2) about the lawsuit filed by a woman in a Spanish court accusing nine Syrian officials of torture, with 3,600 pages of supporting evidence detailing acts of brutality & atrocities; (3) about the over 53,000 photos by “Caesar,” the official forensic photographer for the Syrian military who worked secretly with an opposition group & later defected. They are graphic images of emaciated, battered torture victims in Assad’s gulag. The woman in the Spanish lawsuit recognized her brother in one of the photos which is the basis of her lawsuit. Many other victims have also been identified.

Assad brushed aside all that documentation saying there is not a shred of evidence for the accusations, that we are living in a “fake news era” & that “you can prove anything these days” with photoshopping & trickery. If anybody knows that, it would be him & his coterie of flunkies. He also brushed aside questions about his use of barrel bombs, his bombing of hospitals, & bombing of civilians.
Isikoff also asked about Trump’s Muslim ban. It’s telling that SANA, Assad’s state media & his paid propagandists like Vanessa Beeley posted his response without embarrassment. He said the US Muslim ban is an issue of US sovereignty: “Every country has the right to put any regulations to enter their country.” His apologists in the antiwar & socialist movements might want to reconsider their enthusiasm for a regime so neutral on the question of human rights for thousands of war refugees stranded in subzero temperatures. Or isn’t Assad neutral?

When Isikoff pushed him, Assad said that an unspecified number of refugees were “definitely” terrorists: “You can find it on the net; the same picture that you saw them…in some instances, those terrorists in Syria, holding the machine gun or killing people–they are peaceful refugees in Europe or in the West in general. Yeah, that’s true.” Does it bother “progressives” that Assad gives credence to the Trump regime’s xenophobia & Muslim-hating? Or is that why they mock & oppose the protests against the ban?

As an aside, isn’t it interesting that Assad rejects 53,000 photos by his official military photographer, 3,600 pages of court documentation, testimony by torture victims who survived & by Syrian prison officials & guards, judges, & doctors associated with prison torture, but he finds the photoshop crap his flunkies post on the internet to be credible?

Now here’s a question for the Hands Off Syria Coalition to answer: why didn’t Assad even once denounce US regime-change operations in Syria? Not a peep, not a mention, because such an operation does not exist. Not only that, but he barely mentioned US support for terrorism in Syria which is the centerpiece of his apologist’s & propagandist’s vituperations. He even said he would “welcome” US troops in Syria to collaborate in the fight against terrorism.

It’s one thing for white supremacists, nationalists, fascists, haters of Muslims & Jews, paid propagandists to be caught up in Assad’s lies. But when antiwar activists & socialists came as youth to social justice, did their vision of a life well-spent in struggle include defending or denying the unspeakable torture & murder of thousands of freedom fighters in the interests of national sovereignty? Is it too late for them to reconsider marching lockstep to hell with the most reactionary forces of our times?

Human Rights Watch report on torture in Syria: https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities

A powerful video showing the depth & breadth of social revolution against occupation & for “Azadi” (freedom) in Kashmir. This statement by a Kashmiri father is an urgent appeal for active international solidarity:

“No parents should see the coffins of their children. It’s the most painful thing in the world….Everybody for God’s sake do something. Do something to give these children a chance to live. They are no less than the other children in the world. They dream very high. Give them a chance.”

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2017/02/kashmir-born-fight-170209155453176.html

Cédric Herrou is a 37-year-old French olive farmer convicted in a Nice court yesterday of helping African refugees cross the border from Italy. His olive farm is in a mountain valley bordering Italy near a well-worn route where refugees try to slip past border guards.

Herrou is part of a quasi-clandestine underground railroad of other farmers & townspeople who go scouting for refugees along the border, take them in vans to local farms for food & lodging, provide them shoes & clothing, get them medical care, & help them move on & navigate past border patrol & local snitches who will turn them in to authorities. The snitches are often medical personnel or rail workers prevailed on for help.

The local people who turn refugees in consider Herrou & his fellow underground activists outlaws; others consider him a local hero for unapologetically defying France’s treatment of refugees. Many of the objections expressed by Herrou have to do with witnessing children suffering, endangered, or deported with reckless indifference.

When asked by the judge “Why do you do all this?” Herrou turned the question around & challenged the humanity of French law & authorities who arrested over 36,000 refugees, including many teenagers & children, in the south of France last year & deported them back to Italy. He called it “shameful,” “unlawful,” “ignoble” to endanger refugees or to thwart them in trying to find work & a better life. Providing sanctuary “is an act of humanity, not a crime,” he said & added that his defiance is shared by a network of “thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who believe in fraternity”.

Herrou elaborated his answer to the judge by saying it was his national duty “as a Frenchman” to aid refugees. Certainly he meant that not in the sense of European supremacy but in the spirit of the great French Revolution against feudalism: “liberté, égalité, fraternité”–what today we call human solidarity. “Either I close my eyes, or I don’t,” he said.

The court let him off with a suspended fine since the less than hard-nosed prosecutor expressed admiration for his work as “noble” even if illegal & asked for the lenient suspended sentence. By letting him off so easy, the court signaled the underground network to proceed without fear of draconian reprisals in the courts.

A large rally of activists from the network were outside the court cheering Herrou as he left. They had hung posters on the courthouse which read: “Crime of Solidarity” and “They are Us.” The trial seems to have emboldened Herrou’s defiance because he told French radio he still has four Eritrean teenagers & one from Sudan living in caravans on his farm.

Full respect to Cédric Herrou & the French underground network. The world needs “thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who believe in fraternity” just like them.

(Photo by Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images)

Too close to reading the Amnesty report on Assad’s gulag, I spent some days researching sexual violence as military policy in Kashmir & then several hours on the hanging of Afzal Guru. I’m not made of steely stuff when it comes to torture & was overwhelmed, as though lost in an underworld of utter depravity.

It seems presumptuous to write about what is unutterable & what can only be approximated by those who have not lived such a brutal occupation. I can only do my awkward best to educate & gather the forces of solidarity.

It makes one respect with awe the work of Khurram Parvez & all the human rights investigators at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society whose commitment is the forensics of these crimes. They’re made of very special stuff.

Victory of protest: court of appeals refuses to reinstate Muslim ban. Eat it Trump!

The incomparable Eva Cassidy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlx7Pb-LmSQ

It doesn’t seem possible Wikipedia could be more useless & leaden with foul propaganda than it is on Palestinians but in fact on any entry about Kashmir it might even be worse. You feel like you need an exorcism after you read the entries.

The control of information is a real issue which Assadists with their fetish about fake news & mainstream media have made into parody. They don’t want us to read anything except their apologetics but the antidote to misinformation is to vet all sources & become a detective chasing down the story. You learn a lot that way & aren’t afraid to read anything. You can’t get diphtheria from the written word.