A Kashmiri girl at the funeral procession of Adil Magray.

(Photo by Basit Zargar)

On Kashmir:
“First red cheeks. Now girlfriends.”

–Aabi Malik

“Zakir Musa and Abu Dujana, two rebels fighting Indian occupation in Kashmir, have multiple girl friends, says Indian police. Well our rebels are Casanova, do you have any problem?”

–Zulkarnain Banday

This is 19-year-old Adil Farooq Magray, killed by a bullet from the Indian occupying army yesterday in the Shopian district of south Kashmir during an army siege of his village.

Thousands attended his funeral prayers which had to be held in three rounds to accommodate all the mourners. May he Rest In Peace for hundreds will replace him. Intifada remains strong.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

Kashmir: still think stone pelters are hooligans or “stone terrorists” rather than civilian defense guards?

(Photo from Kashmir Freedom)

“From torture to rape & from fake encounters to mass graves #India’s occupation in Kashmir committing every war crime.”

–from Kashmir Freedom

In the Now, which is part of RT, is circulating a video of Omran Daqneesh & his family whose older child was killed & apartment in east Aleppo hit by a Russian airstrike in August 2016. The image of traumatized 5-year-old Omran was iconic & condemned Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians more powerfully than a thousand polemics. Thus it enflamed Assadists, particularly Beeley & Bartlett who created an energy base producing rancid & unhinged tracts against the child, denouncing it as staged. They remained as obsessed with Omran as with the White Helmet rescue workers & actually attempted to associate his image with head-chopping.

The RT video is clearly the Daqneesh family living in quite comfortable accommodations as the father explains that Omran was used by the opposition to Assad for propaganda purposes & thanking the Syrian army for liberating Aleppo.

Maybe the father always was an Assad supporter; maybe, though not likely after the bombing death of his child, he is now. It doesn’t matter what his politics are & we are grateful Omran & the rest of the family are safe. But if anyone actually thinks Mr. Daqneesh was not muscled or coerced in some way to be part of this effort to undo the impact of the Omran image, then there is no hope for your sense of judgement or your understanding of the Assad regime. God save your sorry ass.

I’m struggling with this article I’m writing about the Middle East. But it’s required me to think again about the meaning & the scope of the monumental Arab uprisings against tyranny called the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, with reverberations in Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco. Mostly, it’s made me realize the place of the Palestinian struggle against the legacy & stranglehold of colonialism in the Middle East.

There’s so much hate & racism directed toward Arabs & Muslims but in this historic period it’s Palestinians, Kashmiris, & the indigenous tribes in the Americas who are leading the most intransigent battles against oppression, plunder, & inequality. Seemingly against all odds. Or at least without the big battalions of international solidarity.

The human race owes so much to them for the price they have paid & the leadership they show.

It’s quite telling that Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, & John Pilger, who all support the Assad dictatorship, chose this moment following incidents of terrorism in Europe to spew their rancid crap about the connections between Islam & terrorism. Just in case there might be some confusion on that score after nearly 17 years of war & hate mongering using Islamophobia & in case the denial of asylum to refugees because they might be ISIS didn’t make that accusation clear.

It’s one thing to speak uncomfortable truths. It’s quite another to compromise with war mongering not because harsh realities must be faced but because you want to stuff hatred down other people’s throats. The three of them are gaseous windbags but they aren’t stupid & know exactly what they are doing. So let us ourselves speak uncomfortable truths. Let us say openly that Fisk, Cockburn, & Pilger are leading the chorus of war mongers & haters associated with the counter-revolutionary Hands Off Syria Coalition & anyone who takes their word on things is a fool.

Did I mention that I don’t know anything about Wahhabism? Not any more than those who denounce it as the basis of terrorism. What I know about is war-mongering & people who blow smoke from their nether regions to cover their ignorance. If I were so inclined, I could write a political profile of them & if I go to heaven it will be because I have had to tolerate so of many of them in my political life.