Jared Kushner is not going to broker a peace agreement between Israel & Palestinians & not because he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow about diplomacy. Neither did John Kerry.
The US is not trying to broker peace, as we know from the Oslo Accords which are the terms of surrender for Palestinian self-determination. Any negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas are a charade since he does not represent the aspirations of Palestinians nor justice but was installed solely to implement the Oslo Accords.
Reposting this from June 22, 2016:
Whither goeth the left? Syria will decide.
The left has been in sustained crisis for nearly forty years now–since the end of the Vietnam War really. It has long been divided & factional but for nearly 100 years the decisive rifts have always involved war & where you stood. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that a crisis is emerging so sharply among progressives about where you stand on Assad, on Syria, & on foreign military intervention.
Partially, the problem is reliable media sources of information in a complex situation; partly it’s the theoretical bankruptcy of celebrity left leaders who appear to be coasting on memes rather than political scholarship; & partly it’s the debating style of leftists who ridicule & taunt opposing views rather than politically anatomize them. Macho one-upmanship has replaced sharp, coherent analysis.
Quite frankly, most of us don’t know squat about the organizational & military character of ISIS. It’s very difficult to unravel the political character of the Syrian popular militias & who is arming them. Most of us can’t agree on who is actually bombing Syria or whether those bombers are going after Assad or ISIS of civilians.
But one thing is clear & that is Syria is a watershed moment for progressives–socialist & others. How we are responding, including the theoretical methods we use to understand, are creating rifts & divisions from which there will be no rapprochement–but from which many young people will learn & will emerge as new theoretical & political leaders to replace those veterans who substitute assiduous analysis with strutting. As it stands today, there is no left on Syria but only a cacophony of competing rationalizations depending on which military you support.
What’s going on in Syria is complex & confusing. Antiwar activists need to understand if this is, as some allege, a regime change situation like the US in Iraq & Libya–& if so, what can we do about it without supporting the dictatorship of Assad. There needs to be discussion on this, not snide, smart-aleck repartee where analysis is required.
But there are some red alerts that should be noted in the ongoing cacophony that can hardly be called a debate: If you support the Assad regime & sneer at the popular revolution against him, you might be a redneck. If you support or advocate military intervention by any regime for or against Assad, you might be a redneck. If you take Russian propaganda like RT as the gospel truth & sneer at the testimony of Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, & other Syrian human rights groups, you might be a redneck. If you vilify first responders digging through rubble to rescue civilians & slander them as al-Qaeda, you might be worse than a redneck. If you slander the deceased Jo Cox as al-Qaeda for supporting those first responders, you might as well bend over & kiss your ass good-bye as a progressive.
Photo is (r) Syrian child suffering white phosphorous burns & (l) rain of white phosphorous from Russian bombers from FB wall of Syrian Organization for the Defense of Human Rights.
The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement.
Why weren’t both police webcams in the killing of Philando Castile presented to jurors? Isn’t that withholding evidence & a miscarriage of justice? The dashboard webcam, which was introduced among 100 pieces of evidence, clearly shows the officer lost control & started pumping bullets into Castile without any provocation whatsoever & with a child in the back seat. One of the bullets came within 16 inches of the child.
The second police webcam is Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, who just saw her boyfriend shot to death in front of her child, handcuffed (for what?) in the back of a squad car. Her 4-year-old girl is pleading with her not to curse or the police will shoot her too & Reynolds clearly lays out exactly what happened. This was not shown to jurors.
Most of the jurors were middle-aged whites. There were two Black jurors, including a young fast food worker & an 18-year-old Ethiopian immigrant. It’s not uncommon that immigrants of African ancestry do not identify with Black Americans because they believe the racist propaganda against them & want to distinguish themselves as different.
Either the prosecution failed Philando Castile or the jurors were contaminated with racism because the police dashboard webcam leaves no confusion about criminal culpability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xELwc52ps7Q
#JusticeForPhilandoCastile
This is the yoga asana India most practices in Kashmir where the relationship between Yoga Day & Hindutva nationalism is most evident & best understood. In Kashmir, they don’t so much want yoking as a decisive unyoking.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
The yoga asanas Narendra Modi & Yogi Adityanath are most adept at. This is the sequence they’re teaching today in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
This is the third International Yoga Day, declared by the UN in December 2014 after a campaign by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi–probably as a way to remove the stench of disrepute from his involvement in the 2002 pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat.
For Yoga Day 2017, Modi chose to lead asanas in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to teach Indians to “yoke body, mind, & soul,” as he said in a speech to thousands assembled in the rally ground. The choice of venue isn’t because Yogi Adityanath is known for facility with yoga asanas–because the guy is more unhinged than yoked–but because he is a rabid Hindutva nationalist also involved in violence against Muslims & Christians.
In 2015, the Indian government attempted to make Yoga Day compulsory, at least for schoolchildren. Muslim organizations objected because in yoga there is an asana sequence called Surya Namaskara or Sun Salutations bowing to the Sun God & as a monotheistic religion, Muslims bow only to Allah. Our
man Adityanath supported compulsory Yoga Day saying those who don’t agree can “leave Hindustan” & those who oppose Surya Namaskara should drown themselves in the sea.
Adityanath is a polarizing figure renowned for demonizing & inciting hatred & aggression particularly against Muslims. He proposed installing statues of goddesses & gods in every mosque, is a supporter of Trump’s Muslim ban, & most egregiously incited Hindus to drag Muslim women from their graves to rape their corpses.
So if Modi hoped Yoga Day would remove the stench of pogroms, his choice of leading the event with Adityanath shows he has a political agenda yoked to the persecution of Muslims & to advancing extremist rightwing nationalism. He can stick that downward facing dog where the sun don’t shine.
Photo is Modi leading Yoga Day in Lucknow. Appropriately, he looks more flatulent than yoked.
Image may contain: 2 people, people sitting
An examination of caste politics in India: caste is when inequality, elitism, supremacy become petrified & ossified into the social structure but differently than class & more like the triumph of apartheid as a social system. The struggle against caste oppression is one of the most important in the world & not understood outside of countries where it exists.
There is a strong & growing anti-caste movement in India & this article by Anirban Bhattacharya is a brilliant contribution to that struggle & to our education.
Since Assadists spend so much time denouncing the White Helmet rescue workers & so little time elaborating on US intervention in Syria, does that mean they think rescue workers are much more dangerous to the Assad regime than US warplanes dropping white phosphorous on civilians?