Netanyahu greeting Modi on his 3-day state visit to Israel in the kissing ass asana:

Put aside all the sentimental blither about the deep connections between the people of India & Israel. Modi & Putin exchanged the same crap when Modi visited Russia last year. This is all about militarism, military partnerships spawned in hell & affinities rooted in war, colonialism, occupation.

Russia is the biggest supplier of military equipment to India, including aircraft & nuclear-powered submarines. One aircraft deal alone was worth US$35 billion. Since 2003, Russia & India have also held joint military exercises between their armies & navies & have now expanded it to include the air force.

Israel is the second largest military supplier to India. Just in the decade between 1999 & 2009, the sales of Israeli armaments to India was worth over $9 billion, including a surveillance satellite system. Israeli companies have arms deals worth over $2.6 billion for 2017 alone. Included in the military deals is a contract for Israel to provide counter-terrorist & urban warfare training to Indian paramilitary forces deployed to Kashmir. Against stone pelters & unarmed civilians?

Not left out of this malignant alliance, the US has expanded its military relationship with India as part of the military build-up in the South China Sea, supplies military aid to both Pakistan & India, & has engaged both countries in the war against Afghanistan.

In this military scenario where Israel, Pakistan, & India play such vital roles in US military strategy & where Russia & Israel are so vital to Indian militarism, none of these regimes are neutral toward the Palestinian or Kashmiri struggles against occupation but are directly implicated in the barbarism.

Human rights & antiwar activists around the world have a duty to protest the occupations & expose all the regimes who feign neutrality toward or support for Palestinian & Kashmiri justice. In this regard, those who support Russian intervention in Syria are choosing to side with barbarism, not justice.

(Photo by PTI)

This remarkable photo was in my FB posts from July 5, 2014 but was actually taken in June of that year. The young man is a Palestinian protester at the weekly protest against the expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum, near Nablus.

On every Friday since July 2011, Palestinians have been holding non-violent protests against the expropriation of their lands & the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumim. Of the village’s over 24,000 square meters (6,000 acres), the Israeli military has so far seized over 4,000 square meters (1,000 acres) for settlements & is still expanding.

The Israeli occupying army has attempted to suppress popular, unarmed resistance by using attack dogs; roadblocks, including at the entrance to the village; night raids into the village, including ransacking Palestinian homes; tear gas, water cannons, skunk water, live ammunition; threatening children; assaults & beatings; hundreds of arrests.

In response to the military violence, Palestinians burn tires, place rocks to obstruct military vehicles, & use stone pelters to force the army to retreat. There is no legal recourse for Palestinians against this illegal encroachment because while the village itself is in Area B, the Oslo Accords designation for land under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, most of the village’s agricultural lands are located in Area C, the designation for Palestinian territory under complete Israeli military control–in other words, land that has already been illegally expropriated. Nothing could more powerfully condemn the Oslo Accords as the conditions of Palestinian surrender & a way to render legitimacy to Israeli colonialism.

Palestinians have stood alone, vilified as terrorists, for most of the past 69 years & they have never bent the knee to colonialism, despite the betrayals of their leaders. The most powerful way to stand in solidarity with their struggle against apartheid, ethnic cleansing, & colonialism is to honor & build BDS, the economic & cultural boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729 & check every single product you buy from canned goods to cosmetics.

(Photo by Nedal Eshtayah/APA Images)

Here I go again, shamelessly laughing at my own jokes; this is from July 5, 2011. It must have been a slow news day:

“British movies give such dignified portraits of the ruling elite there. You can imagine my surprise then on reading a book describing Winston Churchill holding breakfast meetings in his bed with cigar & whiskey, attended by a stinky poodle, a parakeet perched & pooping on his bald head. They really ought to teach the truth of history more like the farce it was.”

Mosul Apocalypse, emancipation US-style:

This elderly woman with an an infant is fleeing Mosul which has been under aerial & ground bombardment by Iraqi, Kurdish, & US-coalition forces since last October. Photojournalism is an extremely dangerous occupation. It doesn’t exist for most US wars, not because it’s so dangerous but unless a journalist is embedded up the ass of the US military to control the information available about the character of the war. That’s exactly the function of Assad propagandists Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, & Robert Fisk who embed with the Syrian army.

We can never allow ourselves to be detached from the realities of US wars. The stark realities are that at least 10,000 civilians have been killed in Mosul, including burned to death by white phosphorous, to take out less than a few thousand ISIS fighters. Nearly a million civilians have been forced to flee to refugee camps without sufficient food, sanitation, tents, medical care. Many are elderly, pregnant, infirm, with special needs; all are war-traumatized.

Those whose solution to end the war in Syria is to call on the US Pentagon to impose a No Fly Zone display a profound detachment from the realities of war, from the history of a No Fly Zone, & exhibit a staggering confusion about the nature of US militarism. The only workable & principled demands to end the slaughter in Iraq & Syria–wars now irrevocably yoked together–is the immediate cessation of bombing civilians & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-coalition & other foreign military forces from Iraq & Syria. If ISIS is going to be defeated, the US & other countries will have to stop arming them.

Out Now!

(Photo by Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters)

Mosul Apocalypse, emancipation US-style:

The way media reports it, Iraqi civilians like this man & small children, are fleeing ISIS fighters in Mosul. They don’t report US-coalition bombing, including with white phosphorous, or the mortars & rockets from Iraqi & Kurdish ground forces.

Bombing civilians is the way of wars of conquest. Bombing civilians is not emancipation.

The only principled antiwar demand is the immediate cessation of bombing & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-coalition & foreign military forces from Iraq & Syria. If they want to stop ISIS, cut off their arms supply routes & stop delivering weapons to them

(Photo by a stringer/Reuters)

We’re coming up on July 8th to the one-year anniversary of the execution of the Kashmiri man whose name & image is censored on FB but whose funeral was attended by over 600,000 people. Many Kashmiri activists, including Syed Ali Geelani, & Indian & other supporters of Kashmiri self-determination were bounced by FB censors temporarily, repeatedly, & some permanently for mentioning his name or showing his photo. Many of them never regained their FB accounts.

The sole purpose of course, since Modi & Mark Zuckerberg are in an unholy alliance, is to censor the voices of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. If we had not obliged that censorship, Kashmiris would not have been able to report about the uprising & brutal repression by the Indian army that lasted from July through December. Their reporting during that period did more to expose the occupation than they were able to do previously in years of tireless work on social media.

It’s certain people will want to honor the man considered so dangerous that his name cannot be uttered nor his image shown but rather than risk being shut out of FB & Kashmiri voices silenced it may be better to show images of those who carry on the struggle. This is to respectfully request that his photo not be posted on my wall since I was bounced twice for quite a while for posting a tribute to him by Syed Ali Geelani; Mr. Geelani never got his account back. It isn’t a matter of cowardice or of disrespecting his memory because there are ways to honor him without provoking the Hindutva algorithms. Though his name & image are censored, we all know who it is we honor & want to protect the right of Kashmiris to continue using social media to educate & build solidarity with their monumental freedom struggle.

(Photo of Modi & Zuckerberg. That Modi is a hugger. And a butcher.)

If you are going to hold a position–say, for example, on whether or not Assad used sarin gas on civilians last April–you should be able to cogently defend it. Reference to a higher power like John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Patrick Cockburn, Seymour Hersh, or “a senior adviser to the American intelligence community” is not a cogent defense. It is the fall back position of those who do not do their own homework. If you do not have time to do the study, then skepticism is the most honest position.

Have to be off Facebook most of day to finish article for Pakistan Today on Venezuela. Just as in Syria & in all of the Arab Spring uprisings, Stalinists & libertarians denounce the protests as rightwing protesters orchestrated by US operatives to implement regime change. The primary source of this position is Telesur which is owned by the Venezuelan & other Latin American governments & based in Caracas.

It’s unspeakable that those fighting for social transformation are vilified as rightwing stooges & agents of the US. That’s how low the left has fallen. From such ashes we await the rising of a new phoenix.

What do you bet Seymour Hersh’s deep throat for his claim that Assad did not use sarin gas is Ray McGovern? McGovern is the long-retired CIA agent born again as a leader of the US antiwar movement which supports Assad’s dictatorship & Russian intervention in Syria? He fits the description to a tee–“a senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense Department & Central Intelligence Agency”–& he’s been campaigning vigorously for years against all claims Assad uses sarin gas on civilians.

That’s how shabby Hersh’s investigative skills are. They wouldn’t pass the muster for a 7th grade book report.

Jeff Mackler, a socialist turned libertarian apologist for Assad, has an article in Counterpunch titled “Trump’s ‘No Fly Zone’ Escalates US War Against Syria.” Most of the article deals in alternative facts that make it more parody than political analysis–especially in claiming the US is not fighting ISIS but is instead trying to take down the Assad regime. When you deal in alternative facts, uncomfortable realities get brushed aside. Like the fact that out of over 10,000 US airstrikes since 2014, only three involved hostile encounters with Assad forces. Thousands of civilians have been killed by US bombing but only one Syrian war plane last month, 62 Syrian soldiers at Deir ez-Zour in 2016, & empty airport hangars at Shayrat air base in April.

We’ll put aside most of Mackler’s alternative realities to address his claim that the groups he leads–Socialist Action (a lilliputian cult) & the United National Antiwar Coalition (a small pro-Assad group) do not take a position on the Assad government but defend “Syria’s right to self-determination.” This is where Mackler rides the rail between alternative facts & bold-faced lies. One need only visit the FB walls of the Hands Off Syria Coalition which Mackler founded to see enthusiastic adulation & glorification of Assad.

In Socialist Action’s statement on the US bombing of Shayrat air base in retaliation for Syrian gassing of civilians at Khan Sheikhoun, they said: “Neither Trump nor any other US government agency presented a shred of proof that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used sarin nerve gas in its bombing of al-Qaida/Nusra Front or any other “rebel” held buildings in Idlib province.” If that isn’t a position in defense of the Assad regime, then what the hell is it? In fact in this article Mackler spends some time defending the recent discredited report by Seymour Hersh that Assad did not use Sarin gas at Khan Sheikhoun or at any other time. Syrians on the ground when Assad was bombing civilians claim it was sarin gas but Mackler dodges that by referring to them as al-Qaida/Nusra Front rebels, ignoring the photographic proof that many were children.

There’s no reason for Mackler to play coy with us about his support for Assad though he has every reason for shame in supporting a fascistic capitalist regime against a popular revolution. There’s no reason to play coy since last year his group sponsored a speaking tour for Eva Bartlett, a leading propagandist for the Assad regime who believes reptilian Jewish bankers run the world. They also invited Vanessa Beeley but at the time she was embedded up the ass of the Syrian army & could not get away.

The entire political position Mackler lays out in one rancid apologetic after another is support for the Assad regime. He calls it self-determination to kid himself & deceive his disciples but when Mackler says he doesn’t take a position on the Assad regime what he means is that he will steadfastly refuse to condemn the monstrous human rights & war crimes of the Assad regime & will instead justify them in the name of self-determination against US imperialism. He will justify the carpet bombing of civilians by saying they were all al-Qaida operatives while also denying the Syrian use of sarin gas, barrel bombs, or the use of thermonuclear bombs by Russian bombers. He will turn a blind eye to reports that since 2011 the Assad regime has tortured & hung to death over 13,000 Syrians, including women & children, & dumped them in mass graves, & he will scoff at the claim that nearly 107,000 Syrians are still in Assad’s gulag.

Maybe Mackler should explain which Syrians he thinks have the right to self-determination. Just the ones that run the government? Just the fascistic capitalist class? What about the nearly half a million who have died by Syrian, Russian, & US bombs or the over 4 million who fled for their lives? What about those who were tortured to death & those still in Assad’s prisons? Who are they? Are they activists who rose up against Assad’s dictatorship in 2011? What did they do to deserve such a fate & to be excluded from that self-determination thing? Mackler should explain but our man won’t explain because when you side with dictatorship against a popular revolution & still want to call yourself a socialist, you end up talking through your ass.

(Photo is Assad propagandist Eva Bartlett next to Mackler standing)