“Revolution needs Courage not #internet & Courage Is made in #Kashmir.”

–Shahid Mehmood Mughal

In its ongoing campaign to let my Facebook friends get to know me, they want me to tell you my life motto which I don’t really have other than the Golden Rule. But I do have a conviction you may find so unedifying that you’ll end up unfriending me. But here it is:

“Never let a sucker punch you; never let anyone run you around the block like a fool. For when you’re old & gray, what will still stick in your craw are the times you couldn’t find the words to tell someone to back off because you are no one’s fool & deserve respect.”

Often people are better at standing up for others than for themselves. Fight for your own dignity like you fight for others because tolerating disrespect eats the soul. Advice almost every senior woman would give you

Homeless in Manila, Philippines: Manila has the highest population of homeless people in the world with over 3 million having no kind of shelter. There are 4 million others living in makeshift slums now under scorched earth siege by the government & neoliberal investors who want the slums cleared & the residents forced to relocate to the other side of hell.

That is what Duterte’s so-called drug war is all about. For years, the Philippine government has used arson, forcible eviction & bulldozing slums to remove residents in order to build upscale shopping malls, resorts, golf courses for the world’s elite. Trump Towers in Manila is part of that schema which means Trump, Inc. has a vested political interest in slum clearance.

To facilitate the process of slum clearance & overcome resident’s aggressive resistance, Duterte is enforcing a death squad war on the poor, a bounty war where vigilantes & police are offered rewards for every corpse they bring in like it was trash removal rather than extrajudicial executions of the poor. That means Trump has a vested interest in the death squad war on the poor.

Since Duterte became president on June 30th, 2016, over 9,000 men, women, & teenagers have been shot down in cold blood on the streets for suspicion as a drug user or small-time peddler. The government officials, bankers, big-time operators moving the drugs from China & Myanmar into the Philippines are making plans to cash in on those upscale malls & resorts & looking forward to doing nine rounds on the swanky new golf courses.

The homeless man & woman here live inside concrete drainage pipes which serve not only as sleeping quarters but as defense against vigilante hit men.

Our fullest solidarity with Filipino human rights activists & organizations standing against Duterte’s war on the poor. It should come as no surprise that Assad supporters are among Duterte’s strongest supporters.

(Photo by Ezra Acayan/Barcroft Images)

Reposting this from December 2016 when Kashmiris had already sustained over 6 months of military siege by Indian troops, in particular bombardment by pellet munitions, & never bent the knee to occupation. Still they publicly stood in solidarity with the oppressed around the world:
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Kashmiri medical students in solidarity with the Syrian revolution, Yemen, the Rohingya, Central Africa:

Sometimes the weight of violence & militarism in the world overwhelms & seems so daunting because there is not yet a powerful enough international counterforce & because the old antiwar movement has been hijacked by propagandists & become fractured by war-mongering & Muslim-hating currents.

Then a group of students in occupied Kashmir shows the way & we know where the forces of the new antiwar & solidarity movements will emerge. They renew our energy & confidence that humanity will fulfill its historic mission to create a world suitable for human beings led by the most oppressed who have been steeled in action by their own struggles against occupation & colonialism.

Long live Palestinian & Kashmiri Intifada.

(Photos from Rising Kashmir)

The mantra of refugees: when they build walls, we build ladders to get over them. If they build higher walls, we build higher ladders. The same is true for virtual walls like India’s ban on social media which starts tonight.

A Facebook friend sent me this notification about evading the ban so Kashmiris can communicate with others. Being an electronic dunce, I have no idea if or how it works but trust the young will know:

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a tool to evade social media ban imposed in IOK. Download any VPN from Googleplay on your smartphones. It can be any one of the VPNs available, e.g SuperVPN, Zenmate, etc. & for IOS users download Hotspot shield or Onavo protect from the appstore. These VPNs are free to download.

Once downloaded, open the app & do as is required. You will be helped by the app to tread your way into any network & hence keeping the VPN going, you can access the banned sites in your region.

Please share this information with Kashmiris.

Facebook is prompting me to tell you my favorite food as a way you can get to know me. Let’s get this straight: I don’t care what your favorite food is & if you care about mine, we are so not meant to be friends.

(But for the record, it’s green beans.)

In defense of Kashmiri & Palestinian stone pelters:

Stones are not the weapons of terrorists. Terrorists use assault rifles, drones, missiles, & explosives sold to them by Russian, European, Chinese, Israeli, & US weapons companies in a $400 billion a year industry. Terrorists use the same weapons from the same companies as the armies waging wars.

Stones are the weapons of the oppressed, of the unarmed, of the defenseless against those armed with assault rifles, pellet guns, tear gas canisters, missiles, explosives. What should the stone pelters do instead? Let themselves be shot at, blinded, disabled, killed without defending themselves? Go home & stop opposing occupation? Accept colonialism?

Social media is a political weapon, even more powerful than stones. But India is shutting that down. That won’t make stone throwing go away; it won’t make soldiers safer. But of course the Indian government doesn’t care about its soldiers any more than the US cares about its soldiers. They’re all just cannon fodder for corporate interests.

There is a way to stop stone pelting: the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of 700,000 Indian soldiers before those legions of stone pelters drive them out of the valley. Not unlike how the Vietnamese drove the US military out of Vietnam 42 years ago this month.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo of Kashmiri student stone pelters)

The oppressors, including the US regarding Black, Latino, Native Americans, Israel regarding Palestinians, India regarding Kashmiris, always consider the youth a problem, a rebellious spirit to be crushed. They are the heart of resistance to discrimination, inequality, injustice, degradation. Something there is about the young that will not stand for indignity.

This is a valuable article by Ather Zia about resistance to occupation among Kashmiri youth which is certainly not a new development but an expanding one.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/04/resistance-life-kashmiri-youth-170425081937812.html

“Kashmiris should celebrate victory of the Aazadi narrative for it has forced the world’s largest democracy to surrender & ban social media.”

–Gowhar Geelani‏ on Twitter