The line taken by most Assadists is that responsibility for the gassing of civilians at Khan Sheikhoun is not established. There is actually considerable verification of responsibility, including the testimony of survivors. But of course residents of Khan Sheikhoun are discredited by claiming they are al-Qaeda & ISIS.

Other Assadists claim the White Helmets murdered children so they could make fake gas attack videos.

Then there are those who claim it is irrelevant who gassed the civilians but are up in arms about the bombing of empty airport hangars.

There isn’t one of these “nuanced” views that stands outside the range of demented.

https://www.facebook.com/Kashmirnewstrust/videos/632020216987448/?pnref=story

Indian nationalists were so distraught when that fully-armed special forces guy got pushed & shoved a little & went crying home to mama. Wawawa, all the way home.

What about this Kashmiri kid being assaulted by a gang of soldiers? What about the thousands who’ve been disappeared, tortured, raped, murdered, blinded, disabled, disfigured by pellet munitions? Cry me a river.

When Chinese diplomats talk about correcting the “historical injustice” against Palestinians by giving them bantustates, it’s kind of like when they talk about socialism & make China a sweatshop haven.

But the worst part about China blowing smoke about Palestinians is that they have billions of dollars in trade & business deals & academic exchanges with Israel specifically to counter BDS.

China needs another revolution.

It’s an unpleasant but necessary part of politics to polemicize & point out the problems of those who obstruct the process of solidarity building. When they are as dreadful & dishonest as those who support Assad’s dictatorship or who concede an inch to Islamophobic war & hate-mongering & who have taken a wrecking ball to the antiwar movement & Palestinian solidarity, then there is no call for kid-glove treatment. There are no respected elders, no gurus, no masters.

Tariq Ali has been a train wreck on Syria, posting anti-Semitic Eva Bartlett, a Mint Press article claiming the White Helmets are ISIS affiliates who kill babies for PR stunts, US military officers & libertarian white supremacist Lew Rockwell to document his support for Assad. Today he posted a blog called “The Muslim Issue” for the title article “Libya After Dictator Gaddafi: Muslims Sell Blacks For $200 At Open Slave Markets.” With that, his metamorphosis into stink bomb is complete.

Several media sources have recently reported on the emerging slave trade in Libya where about 500,000 African refugees are waiting to cross to Europe. This is a disturbing & horrific development related to the exploitation of refugees & immigrants & directly tied to racist immigration policies.

Not a single media source cited the religion of the slave traders because it is not relevant, is not known, & because they are a godless lot who answer to no god but mammon. So why did the Oxford-educated, elite intellectual feted on every continent as an authority on progressive politics post one of the most hateful, lying-assed, vile pieces of Muslim-hating rubbish he could find?

Yesterday when he posted Lew Rockwell who any honest person wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, we asked “whither goest Tariq Ali?” Today we don’t ask. Today we don’t give a rat’s ass. He’s a goner.

This is the Islamophobic blog posted by Ali. Take a look through it to see just how vile & hateful it is:

https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/libya-after-dictator-gaddafi-muslims-sell-blacks-at-open-slave-markets-for-200/

(Photo is African refugees in Libya from AP)

A few days ago, Indian media (which on the issue of Kashmir is not unlike Fox News) waxed indignant at the video of a CRPF Jawan on poll duty in Srinagar being heckled & manhandled by Kashmiri youth as he walked down the street. Before we cry crocodile tears about the poor fully-armed soldier getting roughed up a little, we should take a look at who the CRPF soldiers are & what they represent to Kashmiri youth.

There are 70,000 CRPF Jawans deployed in Kashmir. They are Indian paramilitaries, special forces, & the very military units involved in search & summary execution operations, the ones using pellet munitions, live ammo, tear gas against unarmed civilians rushing to prevent other Kashmiris from getting raped, beaten, murdered during these encounters. You bet your sweet ass that Kashmiri youth have an attitude problem toward these soldiers.

Only two days after Indian media was waxing nationalistic rubbish about their beloved CRPF Jawan getting roughed up by Kashmiri youth, a video went viral on social media showing the CRPF tying a young Kashmiri protester to the front of an army jeep leading a caravan of armored vehicles & using him as a human shield against harassment & stone throwers. A soldier’s voice in the CRPF video is heard announcing “Those who throw stones will meet the same fate.”

Mehbooba Mufti, the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir (an official of Indian colonialism) defended the army saying the young man was tied to the jeep to prevent bloodshed.

Let us cite for Chief Minister Mufti the Geneva Conventions & the statutes of the International Criminal Court about using civilians as human shields: it constitutes a war crime. Smacking a guy in the arm, hitting him upside the helmet, or nicking his shin with a sneaker may be bad behaviors but they are not war crimes. They are petty-assed revenge for shooting down your neighbors, friends, & classmates in cold blood. And yet India has arrested five Kashmiri youth for the incident & is hunting down others. Where are the formal charges for shooting down unarmed youth in encounters? Where is the outrage & where the formal charges for tying a young guy to a jeep & using him as a human shield?

Save the crocodile tears. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

Video of human shield incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av9C9mp0SvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQRYrpp2cI

This is a quite useful documentary about the military strategy of genocide against Rohingya in Myanmar. The video was published in October 2015, about 6 months before Aung San Suu Kyi became the human rights face of the military junta which continues to rule the country.

It raises questions however. One is the suggestion that violent conflict between Buddhists & Muslims in Burma goes back to the Moghul Empire (the Muslim dynasty that ruled India from the 16th to 19th century). The evidence is far more compelling that British colonialism over the region (which succeeded Moghul rule) fomented tensions between religious & ethnic groups as a strategy of social control.

The documentary also briefly lays out how the Burmese generals reintegrated Buddhist monks blacklisted & sustaining violent reprisals for involvement in the 2007 Saffron Revolution against the generals by whipping them up & engaging them as storm troopers in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya.

The genocide against Rohingya does not flow from some organic disfunction between Buddhism & Islam but is a sustained political manipulation. What has been malignantly engineered can be undone.

Another question raised: in May 2015, many sources, including the UN, reported that 25,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar were adrift in boats in the Andaman Sea without food or water, not allowed to land in Thailand or Malaysia. Only a few boats were allowed port, leaving thousands still unaccounted for.

At the time, authorities claimed human traffickers had abandoned the boats when refused port. How they got away is not explained. Swimming to shore? Paddling in a row boat? This documentary interviews a Rohingya man who claims that in 2015, the Myanmar military forced Rohingya from concentration camps to board a few boats, then towed them out to sea, warned them not to return or they would be shot, & abandoned them to drown.

So the question becomes more strident: is that how 25,000 Rohingya ended up adrift in boats without food or water? Is that why no agency, including the UNHCR, has ever shown the slightest concern about the fate of nearly 25,000 refugees? How many were set adrift by military tug boats & how many were captained by human traffickers who abandoned them?

The third issue with this documentary–& quite frankly what makes it somewhat dull & stifling–is that the adjudications about whether the Burmese government is orchestrating genocide is left to Europeans & Americans from Yale University, the UN, Queen Mary’s College in London, & Fortify Rights, a human rights group. What about interviewing Rohingya, if not in Arakan state, then those in exile? They could be just as legalistic as Yale law students but would have the force of experience.

There can be no objection to Yale or Queen Mary’s investigating; in fact it renders international authority. But they are not a substitute for the voices of Rohingya who know exactly what is going on in Arakan state & what to call it. This is an issue not just because of European supremacism but because the UNHCR just called for an investigation of genocide & is denied entry to Arakan state by Suu Kyi & the military. There is nothing to stop them from interviewing 75,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh who fled Myanmar just since October 2016 & not being able to go to Arakan should not impede an investigation for even one moment.

It’s one of the hardest things for activists to separate from those not traveling in the same direction. There are lots of differences one can live with without conflict but support for brutal dictatorships & war are not among them. It’s too up close & personal on social media to see friends mocking victims of sarin gassing as fake “dead kids.” There’s pathology & derangement involved in that. So parting ways is part of life.

Separating from Assad supporters has meant meeting others I would not otherwise get to know, including many involved in the Kashmiri & Rohingya struggles. This has been an honor & educational beyond measure.

This new friend is Anayet Ullah Arman, a Rohingya refugee & schoolteacher to refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. As we know from his friend Mohammed Imran, Bangladesh denies secondary education to Rohingya refugees so their formal schooling ends around the age of 12. The entire world of learning is denied them & any possibility for employment above sweatshops. The struggle for education has always been central to the struggle against oppression.

These wonderful photos are kids in his classroom.

Media military experts are assuring us the US dropped the 21,600 pound “mother of all bombs” in an area of sparse population density. There are 1,436,000 people in Nangahar Province, roughly the size of Metropolitan London.

Who the hell do they think they’re kidding?

Earth to Hands Off Syria Coalition:

“Do Afghan people under massive US bombs deserve antiwar rallies or are those reserved for the oppressed & marginalized airbase in Syria?”

–Budour Hassan‏

Trump just spoke with great admiration about the MOAB bombing in Afghanistan. Will all those who ridiculed & objected to protests against him now back off their reactionary baloney & stand with us?