Beautiful tribute by Kashmiri rap artist MC Kash to freedom fighters Shaheed Maqbool Bhat & Shaheed Afzal Guru who were both hung by the Indian government. India refuses to return their remains to their families so they may be buried with love, honor & the respects due those who gave their lives for freedom.
Parkour is a fascinating development among young men in Palestine, Afghanistan, & in Kashmir. It’s a combination of athletics & politics. This wonderful video, including comments by Khurram Parvez, explains that relationship.
Zahid Shah, who I love talking with on Facebook & who has introduced me to some beautiful music, is the person who introduced Parkour in Kashmir, teaches it, & here explains how it interacts with Intifada.
Zahid learned Parkour from YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSuUSUMoF0M
(Photo is screen shot from video of Zahid Shah)
I really want to worry about war with Russia, China, & Iran like Assad supporters do cause Armageddon is of concern to me. But honestly, Syria. Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya are more than we can handle now. And they’re actually real.
Glen Ford, the editor of Black Agenda Report (BAR), has an article berating the anti-Muslim ban protesters titled “If Americans Truly Cared About Muslims, They Would Stop Killing Them by the Millions.” He must be confused between the US government & the American people who oppose those wars. Ever since he began promoting the US regime change scenario in Syria & ranting about “jihadi terrorists,” Ford has lost all perspective. When he portrays the Syrian revolution as all head-choppers he sounds like Assad’s paid coterie of propagandists & functions in the same reactionary way politically.
For years, he was a prominent speaker at conferences of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) which is now central to the Hands Off Syria Coalition. Before he continues his hateful vituperations against Americans, he should ask himself why UNAC failed so miserably at mobilizing the 70 percent of the American people who expressed opposition to US wars in repeated polls. Did Ford use his radio show or BAR to build antiwar actions & mobilize those 70 percent?
When you cross over to the dark side of Muslim-hating in Syria you make an ass of yourself railing against American protesters, not unlike you rail against the Syrian popular revolution as all head-choppers, Where did Ford go so wrong?
Protests against Muslim ban outside the Super Bowl & outside Trump’s Mar-A-Largo estate in Florida. Immigration lawyers working the airports. Courts are finding the ban illegal. Things are looking up.
As you move through these perilous times would you rather be with the ones tossing sarcasms at Trump & protesting for refugees or the ones hating on the rest of us for just being & doing everything all wrong?
Myself, I like the smart-alecks. We do not live by indignation alone & we do not move forward laden with hate.
Global Research & Counterpunch are where the deplorables hate on the rest of us. Abandon hope all ye who enter there.
Placard at anti-Muslim ban protest: “We gave you hummus. Have some respect.”
(Thank you to Thamina Faiz for this hilarity.)
The term most analogous to Eurocentrism for the US is American exceptionalism, an old concept recently promoted by Obama & Clinton which places the US at the center of the universe & at heart means our superiority exempts us from the highest standards of human civilization & mandates colonial wars.
It’s peculiar isn’t it that those who deride protesters against the Muslim ban necessarily employ exceptionalism to argue their paltry case by saying if we didn’t march against Obama’s wars, we shouldn’t march for refugee rights–as if the US were the only country barbarically debarring millions of refugees & as if we didn’t have a moral & political imperative to render solidarity to refugees. Supporting refugees is part & parcel of opposing US wars.
The protesters aren’t so provincial as to only demand refugee rights for Muslims but are demanding no wall on the US-Mexican border. In Europe & elsewhere, protesters are demanding the EU open the borders to refugees from the Middle East, Africa, Asia. They express a breadth of vision that opposes wars & demands asylum for brothers & sisters from wherever they come & for whatever reason, including Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide.
There are more photos now of African refugees debarking from Libya. For a long while there were none & thousands continued to drown. Those being rescued from drowning by the private humanitarian operation Proactiva look traumatized & terrified. There aren’t a lot of reports of what most have gone through just to get from war zones & sweatshop zones to Libya but the reports that do exist are gut-wrenching. Many come with children; many are teenagers & children traveling alone.
It doesn’t matter what country we live in nor how we responded to Obama’s wars. We have a moral & political duty to support refugees in whatever way we can. Because that is what human beings do for other human beings fleeing war. Those who sneer or try to undercut that solidarity should hang their heads in shame & just let history pass them by.
This young man’s face expresses so well the trauma & uncertainty so many have endured. He is standing on the deck of a Proactiva rescue ship off the coast of Libya. Those many who cannot rally may want to consider contributing to Proactiva or Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, who are both on the front lines of the refugee crises.
Open the damn borders. No human being is illegal. Refugee asylum for all.
(Photo by Giorgos Moutafis/Reuters)
Kabul, Afghanistan: emancipation US-style.
Temperatures in Kabul today are -2 C / 28.4 F. This is an internally displaced child standing outside “her shelter” which the photojournalist advisedly did not show. After over 16 years of grandstanding displays & conferences pledging UN & international humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, it wouldn’t be smart to show that most are living rough or in makeshift cardboard tents.
For the Pakistani government officials & politicians who insist Afghan refugees should be forced back, this is the reason why that would be criminal.
To the people of Afghanistan let us say that the failure of the antiwar movement thus far to mobilize solidarity to get the US out has been catastrophic & there is nothing we can say to assuage that. Except that we will do our damnedest to change that & rebuild the international antiwar movement. You have paid long enough for our historic failure.
US out of Afghanistan. War reparations in the billions to the people of Afghanistan.
(Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)