Peter Ford singing for Assad for his supper

pasty ass

The fact that Peter Ford is the former British ambassador to Syria & Bahrain would signal to most intelligent observers that he isn’t a particularly credible commentator. But Assadists have been dragging his pasty, bony ass all over media to deny that Assad gassed civilians or could possibly be guilty of any human rights crimes. (As an aside, he’s so pasty & zombie-like he may well be inspiration for David Icke’s theory that political leaders are extraterrestrial reptiles–at least before they became political allies on Syria.)

Ford is a guy whose political allegiances are as commercial (that is, for sale) as his way with words is regrettable. One wonders whether he got his diplomatic posts through aristocratic connections rather than his diplomatic skills after he compared British intervention to “a dog returning to its own vomit.” Hard to recall a single committed antiwar activist who would express outrage at bombing & gassing civilians in quite that language. Genuine outrage uses another language & other metaphors drawn from international criminal codes, not bodily functions.

Now it’s reported that our man-for-sale Ford was named director of the British Syrian Society on February 28th, just weeks before the Syrian gas attack on civilians at Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th. The British Syrian Society was founded in 2003 by Fawaz Akhras, the London-based father-in-law of Bashar Assad the dictator. Akhras reportedly plays an active role in advising Assad how to crush the revolution & has done so since it erupted in 2011.

The British Syrian Society became well-known in 2016 when it invited Rania Khalek to speak at a conference in Damascus. The furor about her speaking at a regime-sponsored event is the hallmark event which discredited Khalek as a journalist & signaled her degeneration into an abject, sniveling apologist for Assad.

She did not speak at the conference because of the furor but instead of leaving bad enough alone, she took a road trip to Aleppo (then under siege) embedded with Bartlett & Beeley up the ass of the Syrian army. On the return trip, she tweeted an accusation that Assad agents poisoned her food which has permanently severed her possibilities of getting on his payroll & damaged collegial relations with Bartlett & Beeley.

The words of Shakespeare come to mind: “Oh what a hell of a mess we make when we try to pull a fast one in the era of social media.”

(Photo is Peter Ford)

Encountering racism at the vet

Took Sophie, the Schnauzer smart enough to go to college, to the vet yesterday for a low-grade infection. Good care, affordable vet about an hour drive from here.

Chatting with the vet’s wife/office assistant, she told me she chose to live in this area rather than Dallas to avoid “the problem.” So of course I asked, “What problem?” She leaned over & whispered in a voice loud enough for others in the waiting room (all Latino ancestry) to hear, “The Blacks.”

Can’t imagine anyone more relieved to hear of her redneck decision where to live than Blacks in Dallas, Texas, but I resented her assumption that I share her antipathies, & not just politically. A good share of my friends & family, including nieces, nephews, countless cousins are Black. Beautiful, wonderful, loving Blacks.

Desegregation of education, as fragmented & badly managed as it was, brought working class white & Black kids together & familiarity broke down the social hatreds, built friendships, created love, made babies. Many of us are the grateful family of those wonderful kids.

Not smart to make racist assumptions about whites nor to exercise your ignorance at other people’s expense.

Forgive me for saying so, but under Trump, the style for right-wing women commentators is blond Barbie. So unfortunate on a six-inch doll is disaster on a grown woman especially when accompanied with three-feet false eyelashes.

Cindy Sheehan goes full monty Assad apologist

Cindy Sheehan, who has been writing dirges about the antiwar movement for years rather than building it, has now gone completely over to the dark side by promoting Assadist propagandists like Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, & the smarmy English vicar Andrew Ashdown.

Pity that, but it’s classic right-wing libertarianism. Grandstanding in politics only takes you so far. Then you have to decide whether being famous & getting honoraria is more important to you than fighting for the oppressed even when that will lose you likes on FB.

Assadist defense of Syrian gassing of civilians

Assadists say we can’t believe Assad gassed civilians because MSM reported it. MSM also reported the US dropped the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan. Do they think that a lie too?

They also say the Assad regime is not so monumentally stupid as to gas civilians & there is no proof he did. No one ever claimed his regime was stupid but only criminal against dissent & revolution. Though it can afford to be supremely stupid as long as it has the deranged remnants of the antiwar movement explaining how Assad would never gas civilians because he’s such a western secular kind of guy.

As for proof? Interesting that in an era of sophisticated military surveillance systems taking videos from satellites there is no undisputed proof. The US Pentagon & other military forces know exactly who gassed civilians & what other kind of bombs Syria & Russia are using against civilians. The refusal of the US to release that documentation shows which side the US is on because obfuscation & disputes about Assad’s weapons keep attention off the US role as counter-revolutionary ally of Assad.

So the question is, do birds have language? Cause my wee parakeets spend hours jabbering away to each other in that staccato, earnest way they have & appear to answer back & forth.

Don’t say I’m anthropomorphizing again. We’ve moved way beyond that in recognizing animals have intelligence & deep emotions too.

Women’s resistance in Kashmir

Kashmir women kicking ass

Kashmiri women protesters in Srinagar: one a stone-pelter & one taking on an armored vehicle of the occupying army.

Where are the kids? Taking lessons in how to stand against oppression & occupation from the mothers of revolution.

(Photos are from FB wall of Life in Saudi Arabia)