Lot of talk in media about “changing the conversation.” Not a bad concept for a media that harps on news like a broken record & beats to death every damn utterance or tweet out of the orange meathead-in-chief in the White House.

The stolen childhoods of Kashmir: more powerful testimony against the occupation by a traumatized Kashmiri child in art therapy.

We should take a moment to honor the two men who lost their lives last Friday on a train in Portland, Oregon when they came to the rescue of two teenage girls, one Black & one wearing a hijab, being attacked by a rabid anti-Muslim & white supremacist hater. Ricky Best, a 53-year-old army veteran & city worker left a widow & four young children. Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, a 23-year-old recent graduate from Reed College, was lauded by his friends & family as modest, thoughtful, & compassionate.

We should also honor Micah Fletcher, a 21-year-old poet who came to the rescue of the young girls. He is now home from the hospital recovering from injuries. All three men were stabbed in the neck.

Misanthropy is not an appropriate response to the rising Islamophobia incited by the Trump regime. It is the refuge of the elitist & cynic. Tens of thousands protested all over the US to oppose the Muslim ban, indifferent to the cynics & elitists who mocked them as mere liberals. Ricky, Taliesin, & Micah are the America most of us know; not the America of Jeremy Christian, the white supremacist assailant.

The Portland Muslim community has raised nearly a million dollars for the families of the three men & for the young girls who will require counseling to deal with the trauma of the assault–not just being attacked but witnessing the attacks on the three rescuers & murders of two of them. There are 14 mosques in Portland who are working together to raise funds & who organized a vigil for the murdered men.

These photos left to right are Taliesin, Ricky, & Micah. May Taliesin & Ricky Rest In Peace. Speedy recovery to Micah.

It must seem I’m going hog-wild with the posting but there is a dramatic reduction in posts from Kashmir. Kashmiri activists on social media were changing the political landscape by exposing the occupation & India is trying to silence them again. It’s an elementary thing to stand with them.

This is one of several remarkable art therapy drawings by traumatized Kashmiri children. Palestinians have also long used art therapy with their children to allow them to express their terrors.

There is probably no polemic about the occupation more powerful & damning than the testimony of children.

The drawing is from this very interesting BBC article:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39801538?SThisFB

Inventions by Muslims: coffee, chess, pin-hole camera, parachute, shampoo, toothpaste, windmill, vaccination, gardens, fountain pens, concept that earth is round, hospitals, algebra, magnifying lens, guitar, marching bands, several surgical procedures, clocks, universities. And now the theory of evolution.

Just saying.

Of course, in the Eurocentric way of viewing things, history & human achievement began with the Greeks. There are many scholarly works debunking this perspective but a valuable popular history is “A People’s History of Science” by Clifford D. Conner.

http://stepfeed.com/these-muslim-scholars-wrote-about-evolution-900-years-before-darwin-was-born-8064

This is an extremely damning report from Amnesty although they pull their punches when they say the US Pentagon failed to “monitor” over $1 billion of military armaments that got into ISIS hands. If there’s one thing the US Pentagon knows how to do it is manage military operations. They did not just lose $1 billion of assault rifles, mortars, & armored vehicles. Those weapons were intended for ISIS.

The Mosul Apocalypse could have been avoided if the US had cut off weapons supply routes to ISIS fighters & no one knows that better than the generals running the wars in Syria & Iraq. Instead, they are one of the sources for weapons.

The US military has never operated as freedom fighters & never will. It is a counter-revolutionary force in Syria & Iraq. Those who oppose Assad & call for US intervention against him, including a No Fly Zone, are handing Assadist forces a weapon against the revolution. Time to smarten up about the role of the US Pentagon. There are no humanitarian wars conducted by US bombers & special forces.

US & all foreign military forces out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya! No to war. No to occupation.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/us-military-admits-failures-to-monitor-over-1-billion-worth-of-arms-transfers/

Watching Hillary Clinton’s commencement address at Wellesley reminded me of my experience with the college which is just outside Boston. It’s on the Boston Marathon route about 7 miles into the 26-mile run. Passing Wellesley was a highlight because the students were out in force vigorously cheering on the women runners & I ran the marathon several times.

There was always some drama when I ran the marathon: like the coworker who kept insisting (even when he passed me on the route) that I wouldn’t make it but then faded out 6 miles from the finish line (unfortunately for him, I passed him at that moment); or the friend who wouldn’t speak to me again when I finished & she faded out; or wanting to stop & punch the lights out of all the misogynists commenting on women’s bodies as we passed (it was like an echo chamber & we could hear it all); or the time I set out two hours early so I wouldn’t finish last & ended up obstructing the world class runners coming up behind me; or the time I finished last accompanied with a 68-year-old woman & five Japanese foreign students whose friends put up a finishing tape for us when everybody else had gone home. We were on the 6 o’clock news as the losers.

I had such good feelings about the Wellesley students that when I was in my 50s & heard about a special scholarship for older students, I applied for it. Part of it entailed attending some classes & I chose some on the history of 1970s feminism. It was impressive to me that the young professor had a very accurate take on the history I had been part of making.

Part of the application process required samples of my writings which were especially copious from my trade union activities but I also had a bundle from my feminist work going back to 1970 (especially many articles on reproductive rights), work from civil rights & antiwar work. I left out the socialist stuff.

It was a very competitive scholarship so I was not surprised when I was turned down. Especially since I was twice the age of most applicants. But a friend suggested I inquire of admissions why I was refused. I wasn’t curious but did phone them to ask. The admissions officer reviewed my file & could have graciously said they selected more impressive candidates. Instead, she said I didn’t measure up to their intellectual standards. I burst out laughing & asked “Are you calling me stupid? You’re teaching history that I helped make.” And that was that.

My friend later said she wasn’t calling me stupid but that I wasn’t the kind of person Wellesley was looking for–not just in terms of youth but in terms of politics. It is after all the alma mater of Clinton, Madeleine Albright, & other such notables. Likely true but I didn’t need consolation & would never confuse the snooty admissions officer with the young students cheering on women runners.

I’m not one to live with regrets & this would be the least of them anyway. Often the impediments in life become detours to a better destination.

Fake news only has meaning in the context of fear-mongering & propaganda. If you learn how to vet sources & hunt down a story, even the lies can provide insights.

This is about nationalists & thugs circulating a video uploaded on April 2nd from Bangladesh which went viral. In the first two versions, it was described as Muslims killing a Hindu man in two different Indian states. In the third version, it is Kashmiri students killing a CRPF soldier.

Now it is claimed the video is an April 1st, 2017 incident in Bangladesh where unknown assailants killed one man & seriously injured another who were wanted for the murder of a Bangladeshi political figure.

In the interests of vetting sources, I don’t read the languages involved in the deception but there are millions who do & who have no vested interest in lying. That vetting can be done & should be before such scurrilous rubbish is circulated all over social media.
If nationalists thought they were on the side of justice they would have no need for dissembling & fabrication.

If you follow the links within this one, you will see how the story morphed into vilifying Muslims in India & Kashmiris:

https://www.altnews.in/video-bangladesh-circulated-kashmiri-students-killing-crpf-jawan/

Philippine president Duterte gave a pep talk last Friday to soldiers at a military camp on Mindanao island where he imposed martial law last week to crush “ISIS-linked” forces. In what can only be considered incitement to rape, he “jokingly” said that if any of them were to rape three women, he would personally claim responsibility so as to give them impunity.

This isn’t the first time Duterte has found rape amusing. During his election campaign last year he talked about a 1989 prison riot in Davao city (where he was mayor) when an Australian missionary was killed & inmates lined up to rape her. In another one of those hateful misogynist jokes women are familiar with, he said the victim was beautiful & he should have been first in line.

Now we understand Duterte’s affinities with Trump & the affinity of Assadists with Duterte. We can also understand if some Filipinos might consider ISIS the lesser evil.

Photo is Duterte exhorting the soldiers to rape.

(Photo is Presidential Palace/Handout via Reuters)