Liberation US-style: these kids lining up in the rain at a refugee camp were forced to flee the fighting in Mosul between ISIS fighters, Iraqi ground forces & US bombers. The bottom photo of a rocket shot off by Iraqi forces is what they were fleeing from.

The ISIS fighters are urban guerrillas living amidst hundreds of thousands of civilians, including children, elderly, infirm, disabled, pregnant women. Doesn’t matter how damn high-tech those bombers are, in such a situation it is civilians who will bear the brunt of the suffering & deaths. Unless of course that is precisely the intent of bombing the entire city & only ostensibly to get at less than 5,000 ISIS fighters hiding behind civilians.

Bombing civilians is not the way to end the tyranny of ISIS.
US our of Iraq & Syria.

(Photo of children by Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images; photo of Iraqi rocket in Mosul by Felipe Dana/AP)

Libertarian left’s antiwar position: no US intervention in Syria.

Their political rationale: I am not an Assadist but I believe in national sovereignty. So Russian & Syrian bombers, Irani, Hezbollah, sectarian mercenaries are freedom fighters against “head-chopping jihadists” trying to take down Assad.

Their mantra: there was no Syrian revolution against Assad. The Syrian people love him & his wife because they’re so pretty, western, & haute couture.

We should take a moment to honor Abdullah al-Sarhan, the head of Daraa, Syria’s White Helmets, who was killed when Assad bombers targeted the civil defense vehicle he was in with a thermal rocket.

May he Rest In Peace.

(Photo is al-Sarhan)

There is something so disturbing about this video of Indian occupying soldiers taunting a small Kashmiri boy. The little guy is lucky they didn’t shoot or beat him. But he’s not more than 6 or 7 years old & clearly feels the weight & anger of humiliation & repression without fully grasping its danger to him.

Kids this age should be playing ball with each other, not locked indoors so they won’t get hit with pellet guns or tear gas. They should be socialized to solidarity & community, not to fighting for their very existence.

Ending the occupation is a children’s welfare issue.

https://kashmirpulse.com/videos/fun-entertainment/watch-melee-kid-security-forces-kicking/19974.html

Fortify Rights, a human rights group, is calling for an international inquiry into Myanmar army “atrocities with impunity” against Rohingya Muslims which have not ceased since October 2016.

Aung San Suu Kyi, as State Counsellor, publicly ridicules accusations of sexual violence by the military as “fake rape.” A member of parliament in Arakan state publicly stated that no soldier would rape Rohingya women because they are “too dirty.”

The UN & human rights groups claim they cannot indict Suu Kyi & the Myanmar military for crimes against humanity because they are denied entrance to Arakan state to investigate. They weren’t allowed to tour the gulags of the USSR either but that didn’t stop them from condemnations because there was substantial testimony about monstrous crimes committed by the Soviet regimes. Do the testimony of over 70,000 refugees (just in the past 5 or 6 months) not count for documentation?

This is the brief video Fortify Rights are putting out as part of their call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ursjg1oy67k&feature=youtu.be

This baby was among 946 refugees aboard the rescue ship Aquarius operated by MSF/Doctors Without Borders after their rescue in the Mediterranean from 9 separate rubber & wooden boats. They will be disembarked at Catania, an Italian port.

Asylum for refugees is a human rights issue; it is a child welfare issue.

Open the borders.

(But isn’t it a lovely picture?)

(Photo from MSF/Doctors Without Borders)

It appears FBI Director James Comey, part of Trump’s Department of Justice, is stonewalling the intelligence committee investigation of Russian interference & the involvement of Trump minions.

It would be a contribution to political theory if the libertarian left (indistinguishable from the libertarian right) who claim Trump is being vilified would “nuance” these expressions of his foreign policy regarding ISIS:

“I would bomb the shit out of ’em. I would just bomb those suckers.”

“You have to take out their families”

“Islam hates us”

Russian bombers pummeled Idlib city, Syria, targeting residential neighborhoods & causing buildings to collapse & bury residents in tons of rubble.

The Syrian opposition coalition accused Russia of using thermobaric bombs, also called vacuum bombs, considered the most destructive explosive, excluding nuclear weapons. The main affects are burns & ruptured lungs from inhaling burning fuel.

Russian airstrikes on Idlib were in the same time period as the US airstrikes on the mosque near Idlib. The Pentagon said the airstrike on the mosque killed “several terrorists” which is Russia’s justification for carpet bombing civilians. Coincidence or coordination?

It appears the counter-revolutionary alliance between Syria, Russia, & the US to destroy the Syrian revolution against dictatorship may be emerging from the shadows, exposing Assadist propagandists & the Hands off Syria Coalition as cold-blooded agents of dictatorship.

Photo is White Helmet rescue workers & other civilians rescuing people from the bombed buildings.

(Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)

A congressional intelligence committee opened hearings today on Russian interference in US politics & the involvement of Trump minions. If the opening statement is any measure, Trump’s goose is cooked. They laid out a litany of treasonous offenses. His narcissism won’t stand up to this scrutiny & condemnation.

It’ll be at once amusing & deplorable to see how the libertarian left defends Trump, what kind of “nuance” they’ll find in the charges.