There’s no way to put a good spin on the lynching of the undercover cop in Srinagar. It was reprehensible. Most Kashmiris are horrified by the act & condemn it. It is not who they are & it is not the character of their freedom struggle.

Two men have been arrested but we don’t know enough about them to judge whether they were a criminal element or just young men who snapped under the constant pressure of the occupation.

The deceased was on surveillance duty at the main mosque which the occupying army has made a center of conflict, taking pictures of people as they left after midnight during a speech by an independence leader. When they confronted him to stop him from taking pictures, he pulled out his service revolver & started shooting into the crowd, injuring three people. Media reports are vague but he was reportedly beaten to death & then hung. Details here would be useful. Was he dead when they hung him? Did they actually hang him?

This is a condemnable act but no time to join the chorus of denunciations by the Indian army & Indian media. If we can’t understand how young people could snap from being beleaguered by an occupying army, facing at least one murder a day by those forces, subject to constant surveillance, harassment, violence, rape, torture, disappearance, incarceration, then we don’t understand much.

Spinoza once said “We study the past neither to weep nor to laugh but to understand.” We study this crime not to condemn the Kashmiri freedom struggle but to understand & to condemn the occupation that has twisted & destroyed the lives of so many.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir. May the officer Rest In Peace.

Listening to a news report about Jamie Oliver getting sued for defamation of character by a magnate in the coal industry who he criticized. It reminds me of when some of the thuggish union leadership circulated rumors that I was prostituting myself every night on the job. In a predominantly male workplace that was obviously causing me problems so I approached a lawyer to sue the union for defamation of character. He laughed & said those kind of suits are for celebrities. My reputation, as an ordinary worker, had no monetary value.

Hate to be censorious, but could you take a pleasure cruise around the Mediterranean whilst thousands of refugees are drowning? That’s a psychological numbness most of us don’t share. Thank heavens for that.

Why the hell is Bilal Abdul Kareem doing lovey-dovey interviews with al-Qaeda guys in Syria? He allows them to justify themselves according to the Quran, present themselves as freedom fighters, & doesn’t challenge them on their criminality. Is he trying to present a human face to terrorism?

Oliver Stone has been a conspiracy thinker for a long time–as least as long as his 1991 movie “JFK.” At some point along the way he became half-baked & has now become an apologist for Assad & Putin.

This Financial Times interview with him expresses his sycophancy & inability to analyze state power but most tellingly Stone expresses the Islamophobia that has derailed him beyond repair. That segment begins at 5:44 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiuplgzbCC4

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.