There is a distinct change in photojournalist coverage of the military siege of Mosul, Iraq. There are photos of buildings reduced to rubble, images of military equipment, a few photos from refugee camps, & this grotesque thing of a guy at a Mosul sulphur spa. There’s an apocalypse in Mosul & this is what media thought worth covering. It’s not just deranged; it is war propaganda.

The only matter of interest in the siege of Mosul is what has happened to the millions of residents being shelled & bombed so the US coalition & Iraqi forces can get to a small number of ISIS urban guerrilla fighters.

The total number of US & Iraqi forces, including special forces, aligned against ISIS in Mosul exceeds 100,000 while Iraqi forces estimate the number of ISIS fighters remaining in west Mosul at 200 to 300, down from an estimated 5,000 when the offensive began in October 2016.

The UN estimates that at least half a million people remain in west Mosul still controlled by ISIS with little food & without water or electricity since US airstrikes took out the power & water plants. They have no access to medical care for the injured & sick because airstrikes & rockets have made it impossible to leave their homes & have destroyed the roads leading out of the area.

ISIS fighters–all 200 to 300 of them–are using civilians as human shields against the airstrikes & rockets. Of course they are because they’re psycho killers. But that should be a deterrent to US & Iraqi forces bombing & shelling. It is barbarism to indiscriminately bomb hundreds of thousands of men, women, & children in the hopes that some of those bombs will take out an ISIS fighter.

But of course, the US Pentagon, Iraqi forces, & coalition allies know damn well that their military strategy against urban guerrilla fighters is barbaric. ISIS is not the primary target or they would have long ago closed down the weapons pipeline to ISIS forces in Mosul & everywhere else. The primary target is the military subordination of the civilian Iraqi population.

The only principled demand is for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US coalition forces from Iraq & because the siege of Mosul is directly tied to the fate of the Syrian revolution to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.

(Photo by Bram Janssen/AP)

http://www.firstpost.com/long-reads/muslim-women-do-not-need-saving-3392516.html

To show how inflammatory it is for Muslims, especially Muslim women, to refute the braying jackasses of Islamophobia, it’s educational to read the comments on this article.

This high-level educational polemic laying out why “Muslim women do not need to be saved” by western feminists, the US Marines, or US or Russian bombers brought out the haters whose Muslim-hating rhetoric is not on a higher intellectual level than the US Pentagon, the EU, or Assadists.

This is a marvelous piece & it would be an act of solidarity to go to the link here & defend it as such. We don’t take guff from the scuzzballs who defend war, colonialism, genocide, carpet bombing on the basis of hatred for Muslims.

Yesterday, at a press conference in Brussels, Aung San Suu Kyi rejected the UN human rights council fact-finding investigation into allegations of mass rapes, summary executions, torture, genocide by the Myanmar military against Rohingya in Arakan state. “We do not agree with it,” she said.

For anyone with the stomach to examine criminal psychology, Suu Kyi would make an interesting case study. How did a woman who spent almost her entire life living an apolitical, domestic life outside Myanmar morph into the public face of the military junta & of ethnic cleansing Rohingya Muslims? Why has she compromised her, albeit entirely false, reputation as a human rights champion to become the voice of genocide? It isn’t reductionist to point to Suu Kyi’s familial roots in Burmese politics & her place in the class system which runs the military & the country as a place to begin such a stomach-turning analysis.

Whatever Suu Kyi’s psychological & political disorders, Myanmar’s refusal to allow UN monitors into Arakan state should be no deterrent to an investigation of ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. Since October 2016, over 75,000 Rohingya fled Arakan state for Bangladesh in fear for their lives. They were direct witnesses to the crimes; they are the survivors who watched family & neighbors be beaten, terrorized, executed, disappeared, tortured, raped, & their villages torched. They are a more reliable source of information than Rohingya who remain in Arakan state who would be terrified of reprisals by the military if they even spoke to UN monitors.

Suu Kyi’s phony reputation as a human rights champion is shot to hell. The UN Human Rights council isn’t doing so well either. But we should demand the UN proceed with its investigation by interviewing refugees in Bangladesh.

We should also demand full democratic, human, citizen rights for Rohingya in Myanmar & for Rohingya forced into exile.
Their struggle is our struggle.

(Photo is Aung San Suu Kyi & EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini at a press conference in Brussels by Olivier Hoslet/EPA)

A lot of erstwhile socialists writing “Marxist-Leninist” defenses of Assad’s dictatorship & bombing of civilians are now writing retrospectives on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution–Tariq Ali among them.

They’re probably no better on the Russian revolution before the internet than they are on the Syrian revolution but who wants to plow through their crap to find out? After reading their essays explaining that Syria is a nation oppressed by US imperialism which they demonstrate with quotes from Lenin & not a peep about Syrian politics, the better part of judgement is to use their essays for toilet paper.

https://www.facebook.com/caseforfreedom/videos/1000597293408859/?pnref=story

Kashmiri women protesting: solid documentation of the article titled “Muslim women do not need saving” by authors Afrin Firdaus Idris & Heba Ahmad.

Political solidarity is a very different thing than a supremacist, usually racist savior complex. Solidarity is extended to those on the front lines of struggle because social transformation everywhere depends on their victory against oppression. But mostly because no human being is alien to us.

“This is not a “VPN war”. This is Free Speech versus blanket censorship. This is Socrates versus the state. This is plain, unadulterated Truth versus narratives of abusive power.”

–Umar Lateef Misgar

“VPN blocking has failure written all over it, much like the Indian military occupation in Kashmir!”

–Mir Laieeq

Many privileged by gender, ethnicity, class express high-flown contempt for “identity politics.” Their antipathies for equality are exposed if you enter one of their political discussions with a female name or without prestigious academic credentials. If identity is no matter, why are women’s comments awkwardly & constantly ignored as if they farted in public? Why are those without educational pedigrees ignored as having nothing worthwhile to say?

If there is anything in politics whose vapidity is outdone by its mean-spirited elitism, it is the relentless criticisms of identity politics as inferior politics. As long as we are persecuted for our identities, we consider fighting for the dignity of those identities as fundamental to our worldview.

There is no such thing as a human being without identity–some privileged, some not, & many violently persecuted. If you can stop the violence against those persecuted for their identities, then we can start talking harmony. It’s not our struggles that divide but the racism, misogyny, nationalism imposed on us. Try to get that straight.

A Kashmiri friend alerted me just now that India appears to have found a way to block VPNs. He has been blocked on four so far today. Apparently there are a lot of VPNs, but as he says, it won’t take long for India to block all of them.

Kashmiris may have to find other IT ways to elude that undemocratic ban. If anyone knows how to do that, please let us know asap.

Please spread the word.

It cannot be said Kashmiris have lost their sarcasm or sense of humor under occupation.