Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who in 2001 flagged my criminal record for using a WMD making it impossible for me to get most jobs, is now a libertarian member of the Hands Off Syria Coalition. She has been appearing on RT, The Real News, & other pro-Assad, pro-Putin media denouncing the demonization & false accusations against Russia.

In the conversation I had with her asking her help to get it removed from my criminal record, she said the FBI had gone astray & needed to be returned to its original noble purpose. Putting aside that it never had a noble purpose except in her pea brain, she is now blithering the “deep state” pulling a soft coup against Trump crap.

How credible do you think a 50-year veteran of the antiwar movement like myself finds someone like her? How did someone like her get respect from antiwar activists when she remains fundamentally right-wing?

And btw, she wouldn’t help me remove it from my record. So as legal counsel for the FBI in Minneapolis, she accused me of using a WMD though I was never accused, questioned, arrested, or even knew I was accused until I applied for work requiring a security clearance & was refused because it’s an FBI alert on my record.

Assadists have been so busy for so long denouncing fake news & the White Helmets that they haven’t gotten round to discussing US regime change in Syria. How’s it going? Is it going? Will they ever get around to talking how all those US bombers have managed to miss the Russian & Syrian ones? Is the Oscar more important than US military intervention? 

“If a critique of jihadi death cults doesn’t also extend to industrial death machines of ‘seculars’ (like Assad), then yeah it’s orientalist.”

–tweeted by Nader

“How the Syrian uprising started: Assad’s henchmen arrested & tortured children, then shot at their families when they protested.”

–İyad el-Baghdadi

Last Tuesday, February 28th, Bernie Sanders addressed the annual J-Street conference. J-Street is a Zionist organization that tries to present the humane side of Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing. In his speech he said:

“Nobody gains when (Palestinian) children are trained to be suicide bombers.”

How is that different from Trump & Netanyahu who said Palestinian children are taught to hate?

With that I rest my case against Bernie Sanders as the lesser evil.

A brief tutorial for those who believe Russophobia is a real problem:

There’s no reason for the US government to hate Russians because they aren’t communist anymore, they’re mostly white people, they’re mostly Christian (a funny Orthodox kind of Christian but Christian nonetheless).

Russia & the US are on the same side in Syria. Smarten up.

If you want to support Trump’s policies, go ahead & do it boldly. If you support Russian bombing in Syria your politics already stink. There’s no need to mask your right-wing politics behind a false alarm. You aren’t fooling anyone.

Nobody is hating on Russians. The hating is on Trump & Putin’s politics.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmiri-girl-blinded-by-pellets-sheds-despair-returns-to-school/story-DaTf30pAdGyN62EkseINyM.html

This is a continuation of the story of 15-year-old Insha Mushtaq who was inside her home when she was struck by pellet munitions fired by an occupying soldier & was blinded in both eyes. Insha is one of at least 1,562 mostly Kashmiri children & youth who were partially or fully blinded by pellet guns just in the last 6 months of 2016. Another 7,330 were injured by pellet guns & though not blinded suffered disfigurement & permanent disability, pain, & health problems because the pellets cannot all be removed from vital organs.

Blinding & disabling Kashmiri young people is not accidental but an intentional military stratagem & human rights crime to demoralize & exact maximum suffering & to disable resistance to occupation & the fight for self-determination. Israel employs the same stratagem against Palestinians. The spirit of colonialism has never been other than snaggle-toothed barbarism. There is no higher vision–not even nationalism.

We know Insha’s story because Al Jazeera & a documentary video reported on the many surgeries she endured to extract pellets & repair tissue. They also reported about the emotional turmoil Insha & her family went through in accepting her disability & knowing how to deal with it. What concerned them is that she was a girl who loved to read & learn & that would surely be much harder.

There was in one account the distinct whiff of pity for Insha from the reporter. Being disabled in any way is a devastation. Everything becomes harder. But disability rights has hammered out the understanding that disability does not make inferior nor is it a death sentence. It requires emotional transitions, major adjustments, physical accommodations & learning new ways of doing things. No one not disabled would be so cavalier as to dismiss just how hard it it, especially for young people, to come to terms with the grief & loss of disability. That’s why disability rights have been so important in forging respect which does not include pity but also demands social services necessary for a good life.

This update is about Insha returning jubilantly to school when it reopened last week, ready to learn, thrilled to see her old classmates. Our girl is back. There’s a lot of healing can be done when surrounded by love.

Insha also lives in a society dealing with thousands of other young people blinded & disabled, not to mention those disabled by age or accident. There is no inspirational silver-lining in disability. It is what it is & it ain’t what it ain’t. But the one think it ain’t for sure is a sign that life is over & is only to be endured as hell on earth. It means a new way of doing things.

And for the record: it won’t stop Intifada. One of the most notable things about the massive uprisings of the past decade has been the large number of activists in wheelchairs on the front lines of social struggle, especially in the Arab uprisings taking on the military.

Welcome back Insha. May your journey be blessed.

(Photo of Insha Mushtaq by Waseem Andrabi/HT)