On top of my reputation for being censorious & playing fast & loose with the block button, let me risk being called a nag. Most of those who share my posts about Kashmir are Kashmiris who already know what’s going on. Broadening international solidarity means reaching beyond them to educate others who don’t know about this historic struggle.

No one has to share my posts about Kashmir but there are several Facebook & social media sites one can go to for articles & reports. Don’t make me ask again.

Iraqi men & boys fleeing with families detained by Iraqi forces as suspected ISIS fighters

Mosul--displaced Iraqis in cattle truck (REUTERS:Youssef Boudlal) Mar 31 2017

The media caption to this photo read: “Displaced Iraqi families who fled from clashes during a battle between Iraqi forces & Islamic State are transferred to different camps outside Mosul, Iraq.”

“Fled from clashes during a battle” is such a nondescript way of expressing the terror & horror of fleeing with your kids from your neighborhood while it’s being bombed to smithereens.

Unless the eyes deceive, those being transported in this filthy cattle truck are men & boys. Human rights organizations are reporting that Iraqi forces are separating out men & boys fleeing with their families & detaining them as suspected ISIS fighters. So is that what’s going on here?

Bombing hundreds of thousands of civilians is not the method for fighting ISIS; it is a method to subordinate civilians.
US out of Iraq! Rebuild the international antiwar movement!

(Photo by Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)

Bilal Abdul Kareem sues Trump regime for being on US kill list

Bilal Abdul Kareen

Bilal Abdul Kareem is an American journalist reporting from Syria & “embedded” with the revolution rather than up the ass of the Syrian army like Robert Fisk, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Bartlett. Because of that, he has become the bête noire of Assadists & the Hands Off Syria Coalition. His interviews conflict with their lies.

Kareem just announced that he & Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Zaidan have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for including them on the US kill list. This is an important legal challenge to the existence of a kill list & the extrajudicial execution by drone of anyone but especially of journalists who have not been accused of any crimes.

Assadist social media sites, including Vanessa Beeley’s, are filled with jubilation, fist pump & dancing emoticons, & calls for the US to take Kareem out. One even posted the photo of a gorilla, the putrid cliche of racism & white supremacy. There’s no purpose to querying the contradictions of Assadist propaganda–nor the repugnancies. Anymore than there is to doing an exegesis of KKK ideology.

If you stand for civil liberties, for the right of journalists to report without being kidnapped, arrested, murdered, bombed to death, then you stand with Kareem & Zaidan & support their challenge to the odious kill list.

Please like & share Kareem’s FB wall as an act of solidarity, even if you don’t see eye-to-eye with him on Syrian politics. (I don’t entirely.) Agreement is beside the point. Civil liberties is the issue.

https://www.facebook.com/bilal.a.kareem/?pnref=story

Liberation US-style–Mosul: hell on earth

Flight from Mosul (REUTERS:Youssef Bouldlal) Mar 31 2017

Liberation US-style–Mosul: Iraqi kids in flight from the war zone where they used to live, now being bombed to smithereens so they can be free. Free of ISIS & terrorized by the US-led coalition of 60 countries making Iraq a killing field.

No US war in Iraq! US out of Iraq & Syria! Russia & all foreign military forces out of Syria!

(Photo by Youssef Bouldlal/Reuters)


Do you think if there was a famine in France or California as severe as the one in South Sudan (where they’re eating leaves), that people would be left to starve?

Shouldn’t the US & Israel feel some responsibility for those starving since they are involved in engineering the disastrous secession from Sudan?

“Each thought I express, I’m paid” by Nasir Patigaru

Stone thrower Kashmir Mar 30 2017

Each thought I express, I’m paid.
Each word I write, I’m paid.
For every slogan I raise, I’m paid.
For every rock I hurl, I’m paid.

For that gun I snatched, I was paid.
For that bullet piercing my chest, I was paid.
My presence in funerals was paid.
My visit to families of Martyr’s was paid.

When you entered my valley, you were paid.
For each day you spend here, you are paid.
For harrasment, torture, arson, murder, you are paid.
Even for saying, I’m paid, you are paid.

If my each act of resistance is paid,
Your every act of aggression is paid.

The difference:
You are paid with money and promotion,
I’m paid by hope of ending your occupation.

–Nasir Patigaru

India Today gets stung in so-called sting operation in Kashmir

Stone pelters Kashmiri Intifada Mar 30 2017

Kashmiri Intifada vs Indian soldiers Mar 30 2017

India Today did what they call a sting operation in Kashmir where they claim to have uncovered a criminal syndicate of “insidious villains” from Pakistan or possibly Kashmiri independence leader Syed Ali Geelani who are organizing & paying Kashmiri youth a stipend to charge Indian occupying forces with stones & molotov cocktails.

At first the report seemed to be Indian TV’s version of Saturday Night Live but it’s just too stupid for even lowbrow satire. Maybe a reporter from India Today did talk to four guys in Kashmir but they should chalk it up to being played & not make asses of their reporters by airing it as serious news. Either that or it’s the same trough that Assadist propagandists draw from.

According to one of the Kashmiri guys who played the reporters, they each get paid “Rs 5,000-Rs 7,000 (£80 / USD$100) a month & clothes. Sometimes shoes as well.” So for the price of a one-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of town, this criminal syndicate has found thousands of people to brave tear gas attacks, risk being blinded & permanently disabled with pellet guns, shot & killed with live ammunition, arrested, tortured, disappeared? It’s a good thing they throw in clothes & a pair of shoes.

India Today even made “Down With Stone Pelters” their banner on FB & Twitter today. What kind of crap is this that passes for political news & not just in Indian nationalist media? This obvious propaganda & foolishness was picked up by MSN & the Daily Mail. The problem in Kashmir is not stone-pelters. It is the presence of 700,000 occupying troops engaged in the most monstrous crimes against unarmed civilians. The purpose of this Down With Stone Pelters campaign is to justify even greater violence against Kashmiri Intifada under the guise of fighting mercenary terrorists.

Long live Kashmiri Intifada. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

For two days I’ve been chasing down a skeletal baby Chihuahua with an injured eye who wanders the area. He’s led me down allies, through backyards, & always left me in the dust.

Yesterday, two police cars lit up like Christmas trees stopped me because they got reports about my suspicious behavior. When I told them I was tracking an abandoned dog & they saw the nine mutts in my car, they sent me on my way. I’ll remember the car full of Chihuahuas trick if I ever take up a life of crime.

I take my dogs with me since they’re used to hunting with me for Sophie the Houdini Schnauzer. I couldn’t catch the little guy again today so I let Annie & Juan go after him since they’ve both helped me rope in errant dogs previously. They cornered him & exchanged sniffs till I could wrap him up. This herding thing from two Chihuahua mutts is a marvel to behold.

If Myanmar denies UN Human Rights Council team entry to Arakan state, they can interview refugees in Bangladesh

Noor Kayes, 18, holds her 26-day-old unnamed daughter. (Reuters) Mar 30 2017

Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh: 18-year-old Noor Kayes with her 26-day-old daughter. Noor fled with her parents from Poachong village in Myanmar two months ago after her husband was killed by the military.

If the UN Human Rights Council is prevented from entering Arakan state, Myanmar by the military & Suu Kyi regime to investigate charges of human rights crimes, the monitors can begin with Noor & the other 75,000 refugees in Bangladesh. They are free to speak whereas those remaining in Arakan would be terrified of retributions by the military when the UN monitors leave.

This stunning photo is from this wonderful album of Rohingya mothers with their newborn babies in a Bangladesh refugee camp:

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/young-rohingya-mothers-flee-persecution