Apropos the US-NATO, India, Israel, Syria:

“As Tacitus long ago said about belligerent armies, “They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.””

–Zuber Hatia

There was another brutal encounter that began in the wee hours this morning between Indian occupying forces & Kashmiri freedom fighters in Chadoora town, about 15 miles / 25 km south of Srinagar.

It began with a military search & summary execution mission after a tip-off to India’s snitch & surveillance network of the presence of a militant in the area. As soldiers & special forces began shooting up a house where they thought he was hiding, protesters from the nearby areas chanting anti-India slogans began converging to interrupt what Indian nationalist media is calling a “gunfight.” It isn’t a gunfight when it’s one guy with or without a weapon against a squadron of special forces. That is a massacre.

The protesters were absolutely justified in trying to protect their fellow from being murdered & to help him escape. Even if he were guilty of serious crimes, this kind of operation is designed to execute him on the spot without even knowing who he is or whether he’s guilty of anything.

Now the special forces thugs turned on the courageous protesters throwing stones to interrupt the operation & assaulted them with tear gas, pellet guns, & live ammunition. There is considerable video & photographic documentation of soldiers shooting at unarmed protesters.

When it was over, the unidentified militant was dead along with three young protesters & 28 people were injured. Indian security forces stopped the ambulance carrying the body of one of the victims & prevented it from moving. The encounter ended with Indian forces razing the home to the ground by shelling it & with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They claimed they found one weapon. For all we know, it could have been a sling shot.

The three young protesters killed, all in their 20s, were Zahid Rashid, Qaiser Ahmed Ganai, & Ishfaq Rashid.The name of the alleged militant is not yet known. May they all Rest In Peace. They died as martyrs. Our sincere condolences to their family & friends. Our highest esteem for the protesters who stood to defend them.

This is some of the protesters standing against the occupying army.

(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP)

https://www.facebook.com/kashir124/videos/1871012199778874/?pnref=story

This video from Kashmir shows the violence of the occupation, the scope of popular resistance, & the presence of death & grief that is such a part of the struggle for self-determination.

Please pass it along to educate others about this historic struggle against colonialism & to build international solidarity with Kashmiris. Je suis Kashmiri.

Mosul, March, 2017: Armageddon or liberation US-style?

Since the main organizers of the anti-AIPAC rally in DC last weekend are ardent Assadists & members of the hate-mongering Hands Off Syria Coalition, it was a given that some of the participants would carry Syrian flags in support of Assad & Russian intervention in Syria. It was a given that this would cause conflict with Palestinian supporters who oppose Assad’s dictatorship, oppose Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians, & understand that the fate of Palestinian self-determination is directly tied to the fate of the Syrian revolution.

Those who don’t understand the destructive, divisive character of Assadist influence & support for counter-revolution in Syria among Palestinian solidarity activists just want a harmonious, united movement back so they dummy up & refuse to inform themselves of the issues at stake. The life & death issues for Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis who are all being bombed to smithereens.

Assadism is a poison to Palestinian solidarity & has brought the antiwar movement to a dead-end. The fracturing of these movements is a wrenching process to go through but it is a necessary one to throw off those whose activism is based on a profound phobia & hatred of Muslims, i.e., those whose politics have the depth & malignancy of US Pentagon war propaganda, & those whose solidarity with Palestinians is based more on a hatred for Jews than respect for Palestinian justice.

No one has to like this situation but the days of dummying up, hoping the conflict will just go away, are over. We need to inform ourselves about the Syrian revolution & either stand with it or against it. There is no neutral way. Not if you give a damn about justice, including for Palestinians.

Those oppressed for their identity don’t truck well with the rubbish demeaning our struggles against racism, casteism, misogyny as politically inferior. If a demographics were done of the people who hold “identity politics” in contempt, privilege would be written all over it. As long as we are oppressed for our identify, we will fight for our dignity as part of every struggle we are involved in–because our identity is always an issue.

As Khalid Anis Ansari so succinctly & cogently states it:

“there is no politics without an identity. we only embrace those that work for us and reject those that don’t. left, feminist, hindutva, muslim, pasmanda, dalit, bahujan, moolniwasi, lgbti, islamist, marathi, ecofeminist, adivasi. its a long menu card. make a pick and fight your battle….cut this crap that your politics is beyond identity.”

Western media reports that ISIS in Mosul is using civilians as human shields. Maybe. Probably. They’re at least as psycho as US special forces. But then you stop bombing where you think ISIS is holed up behind civilians. Then you stop carpet bombing residential areas. You cut off their arms supply route. You hunt down the countries supplying them arms & put a halt to that. Or is that getting too close to home?

What the US coalition & Iraqi forces are doing in Mosul is the same scale of barbarism & criminality as Syrian, Russian, & Iranian forces in Aleppo.

Massive bombing of residential areas, entire families buried in rubble & terrifying reports of children shouting from beneath the rubble for someone to help them. Tens of thousands dodging crossfire & rockets in flight for their lives; Iraqi special forces making door to door home invasions searching for ISIS snipers; Iraqi forces detaining fleeing men & boys as potential ISIS fighters trying to escape. This is the character of liberation US-style.

If we learn nothing else from this method of fighting ISIS, it is that bombing cities with millions of people to take out a few thousand urban guerrilla fighters is not only a monstrous strategy but it is a completely dishonest one. The intention both in Aleppo & every other Syrian city being bombed & in Mosul in Iraq is to bring the civilian population to its knees in subordination.

There is no more tragic nor epic failure than the complete lack of an international antiwar response to defend the Syrian revolution & the Iraqi people from US occupation. It is the epic mission of our generation to forge a new antiwar movement, uncompromised by association with Assadism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism & committed to the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops & military operations in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

These are photos of civilians fleeing Mosul on March 4th as bombers turn the city into mountains of rubble.

US out of Iraq & Syria now!

(Photos by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Some US senator too old to be so stupid said Trump is on a learning curve & may turn out to be a valuable president. Define valuable. Define learning curve & how in Trump’s case it’s distinguished from derangement. We dare you.

These are the poetry, musical, & other presentations at the “In Lak’ech. I am you” celebration of solidarity last Saturday in McAllen, Texas which I participated in. Not all of the performances are recorded here.

One of my petty antipathies in life is speakers who are ill-prepared, which I am in this presentation on solidarity. But let it be a lesson to myself & others to always think out & organize comments in advance.

Thank you to Monica Ramirez, artist, writer, organizer, for coordinating this wonderful event & to the musicians & poets, including Priscilla Celina Suarez, the Poet Laureate of McAllen.
Like most political events here, it was bilingual Spanish & English, as is the area on the US border with Mexico.

https://www.facebook.com/theartofmonicaramirez?pnref=story