TV news today is all OJ Simpson’s parole hearing all the time. Quite frankly, I think he was sent to prison not for stealing his own property back but because they were trying to get him for murdering Nicole Simpson & Ron Goldman. A jury found him innocent of those 1994 murders. He probably did murder them but if the police hadn’t planted evidence to nail him & the forensics team hadn’t mishandled evidence the overwhelming evidence would have been more persuasive to a jury. If he hadn’t had the resources for a dream team of lawyers & was a Black working class kid, he’d have been sent up the river for life without parole.

What to me is most memorable about the 1995 verdict is that media immediately began beating the drums of polarization about the incompatibility of Blacks & whites. This incited racists to come out from under their rocks which was a very scary phenomenon to witness. Serendipitously, just two weeks after the verdict, Black organizations held the Million Man March in Washington, DC which had conservative politics but was a show of Black power that drew at least a million people. The racist crap in media stopped on a dime & the racists went back under their rocks. That is why I am an advocate for Black power.

Twelve-year-old Aroofa Farooq was struck & killed by an Indian army vehicle today near her home in the Shopian district of south Kashmir. With 700,000 troops deployed to Kashmir, India must have thousands of armored vehicles that endanger especially small children. They are probably as reckless driving the damn things around Kashmir as they are shooting off pellet munitions that blind, disfigure, do serious, permanent physical harm, & kill children, youth, elderly. In such a situation, this cannot be considered an accident but should be condemned as a war crime.

Go back India, go back!

“Al-Qaeda & Assad regime have one goal in common: Elimination of the Syrian Revolution.”

–Mohanad Mezghiche

From Syria: “For Palestine, for Aqsa mosque we stand. Our hearts & prayers have always been with you.”

–tweeted by Lina Shamy

The funeral of Parvaiz Ahmad in Kashmir, July 16th, 2017:

We should never forget there was a media blackout about the occupation of Kashmir until Kashmiri activists on social media obligated media to begin reporting in order to establish a counter-narrative to that of a freedom struggle against occupation. Before the 2016 uprising & military siege in Kashmir, photojournalism was mostly Kashmiri women’s prayer rituals, snow-covered trees, flower patches & serene images of Dal Lake. Then in 2016, borrowing from coverage of Palestinian Intifada, media began using photos of the lone stone pelter, as though they were antisocial hooligans isolated from mass resistance & the thousands of protesters they defended.

It is once again on social media where we learn about the character of the ongoing occupation & where we see that, like in Palestine, the most pervasive image of occupation–after that of resistance–is of funeral corteges/protests where they grieve & bury young martyrs & protest the occupation at the same time.

Our fullest solidarity with Kashmiri freedom fighters.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Basit Zargar)

It’s not an exaggeration to say the most compelling photojournalism today is from Kashmiris. They are brilliant in conveying the brutalities of military occupation not by displaying the gruesome so much as by showing us resistance & the humanity of occupation. That is not so we can turn away from the gruesome realities that Kashmiris live with but because they can be more terrifying & discouraging than motivating to political solidarity. It is that we can more easily identify with Kashmiris as our own.

This grieving man attends the funeral prayers of Parvaiz Ahmad in Pahoo village, Pulwama district, south Kashmir. We needn’t see what the Indian army has done to young Ahmad; it is enough we see how Kashmiris feel about his loss.

May Parvaiz Ahmad Rest In Peace. Our sincere condolences to his family & friends.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Basit Zargar)

It was July 2014 when Israel launched its seven-week carpet bombing siege of Gaza & July 2016 when a six-month Indian military siege tried to crush the uprising after the execution of BW, the man whose name & image are censored on FB but whose funeral was attended by over 600,000 people. Those two sieges (they can hardly be called events) were a living hell just to witness so words fail in describing what it must have been for Palestinians & Kashmiris to endure.

Facebook draws up our archives every day & images from Gaza 2014 & Kashmir 2016 are now appearing. It may be worthwhile to repost some of them because the extremes & the forms of violence have not ceased in either place.

They are monumental struggles & some say hopeless struggles. They are only hopeless if we continue to let them stand alone against such massive military might. But even without phalanxes of international support their intransigence is not defeated. Like indigenous tribes in Brazil fighting neoliberal scorched earth economics & Syrian revolutionists against the Assad dictatorship, Palestinians & Kashmiris are teachers of social transformation. Their struggles are our struggles because solidarity is not a one-way street of noblesse oblige. It is the iron law of social transformation.

My wonderful 82-year-old friend from Canada was overwhelmed with the kind offers of money to replace her broken-down computer but is gratefully accepting the laptop offered by another generous friend & fellow Canadian. Thank you so much for your offers & especially to my friend for giving the computer so that our sister can continue to follow the struggles of the oppressed & express solidarity.