The origins of the oppression of Rohingya are quite complex but are rooted primarily in the intentionally divisive policies of British colonialism which played ethnic & religious groups off against each other. Classic divide & conquer stuff. That was exacerbated during the WWII occupation of Burma by the Japanese. Arakan state Buddhists allied themselves with the Japanese while the Rohingya Muslims collaborated with the British to defeat Japan.

There’s a lot of mythology around the person of Aung San, a key figure in the independence of Burma from Britain & the father of Aung San Suu Kyi. He was a nationalist, anti-colonialist, & founder of the Burmese Communist Party influenced by Stalin’s nationalist views on self-determination for ethnic minorities. His role is monumental in the formation of Burma, most importantly in laying the juridical & social foundations of discrimination & conflict between the dominant Bamar (Buddhist) ethnic group & other ethnic groups in Burma. Burma now officially recognizes 135 distinct ethnicities but there are many unrecognized ethnic groups, including especially the Rohingya.

The dominance of the Bamar & conflicts with ethnic groups were incorporated into the foundational document of Burma called the Panglong Agreement of 1947. Only the Bamar & three other ethnic groups were allowed to participate & debate if they could form a united state when the conflicts cultivated by the British Raj were far from being understood let alone resolved. The Rohingya were among those excluded. Efforts to deny Rohingya citizenship began with Myanmar’s independence in 1948 but pogroms against them go back much earlier. The entente between the Bamar & the three ethnic groups who signed the Panglong Agreement broke down immediately after independence so that the central government (a military junta since 1962) has been engaged ever since in constant armed conflict with several ethnic insurgencies using the methods of discrimination, torture, arson, robbery, rape, unlawful arrest, & massacre.

The reasons why the Rohingya were singled out to be denied citizenship & subjected to a policy of genocide originated under British colonialism & have nothing to do with influence by Al-Qaeda or ISIS. Burma is a prison house of nations.

Photo is Rohingya refugees who crossed into Bangladesh last Friday after walking days to escape violence.

(Photo by Adam Dean for The NYTimes)

Assadist ideologues & their flunkeys have so debased political analysis that many support not just Assad, Putin, & Trump but also Duterte, Maduro, & Aung San Suu Kyi. They are now circulating articles & video interviews on Iranian & Russian media claiming there are no such people as Rohingya, that there is no genocide against them, & that in fact “Bengali illegals” are conducting genocide against Buddhists under the influence of Al-Qaeda & ISIS.

The fountainhead of this rubbish is a detestable Irish guy named Gearoid O Colmain who is into all that anti-Semitic Rothschild bankers crap, writes mountains about the “bourgeois decadence” of homosexuality, supports Assad’s dictatorship in the name of anti-imperialism, mocks the Arab Spring uprisings as orchestrated by the CIA, & denounces Irish activists who protest US warplanes using Shannon Airport as a refueling depot.

A thoroughgoing analysis of these politics are long overdue. When libertarianism first emerged in about 1974 it was a crackpot, marginalized cult that set out to physically destroy Stalinism & the Communist Party in NYC in “Operation Mop-up”. Their weapons of choice were fists & nunchuks, a martial arts weapon. Other socialists mobilized to defend the CP despite their political differences. It was not through countering the libertarian goon squads with weapons or punching them in the face but in physically defending CP meetings & speakers from assault by forming phalanxes around them. A lot of people got hurt defending against those nunchuks but it was an effective collective method that repelled & ended the physical attacks.

Now as political polarization deepens, libertarianism has become a significant political force & in one of the wretched ironies of politics has joined forces with Stalinism in all of its metastases & with fascism. This process is still unfolding but it requires a conscientious theoretical elaboration. If anyone is interested in collaborating on such a project please let me know.

This is 106-year-old Bibikhal Uzbek, an Afghan refugee who has been living in Sweden for about a year. She is blind, confined to bed, & believed to be the world’s oldest refugee. Swedish immigration authorities just rejected her asylum application. She still has a right to challenge the decision but what possible appeal could she make if being blind, bedridden, & 106 years old hasn’t moved them.

Sweden was part of US-NATO operations in Afghanistan & any investigation would surely turn up their continuing military involvement in one form or another. They have every obligation under international law governing war refugees to grant asylum to every Afghan who applies & quadruple the obligation since their military actions created millions of refugees in the first place.

In 2016, nearly 661,000 Afghans fled the continuing US-NATO war; the UN predicts another 450,000 Afghans will be displaced by the end of 2017. There are already nearly 5 million Afghan refugees worldwide.

Immigration is a human right. End the US-NATO war in Afghanistan. Out Now.

https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera/videos/10155972320873690/?hc_location=ufi

(Photo from AP)

Satire is the genre of the oppressed. Through ridicule, mockery, & ironic juxtapositions, satirists attempt to subvert actual power relations to the advantage of the oppressed. That’s how we can distinguish that Charlie Hebdo is not satire but hate propaganda filled with misanthropy, racism, Islamophobia, & libertarian politics. This cover for its recent issue characterizes victims of Hurricane Harvey as fascists saluting Nazi flags as they drown. The text in English reads: “God exists. He drowned all the neo-Nazis of Texas.” This kind of libertarianism is on a continuum with the punch-a-fascist-in-the-face strategy.

(Photo is cover of Charlie Hebdo issue published September 1, 2017)

A Turkish Airlines pilot halted the deportation of an Afghan man denied asylum when he refused to take off out of Heathrow after he heard the man weeping. The unidentified pilot came off the plane & said “You’re not going to take him. I’m not flying. Someone’s life is at risk.” European aviation regulations give the pilot authority over the safety of passengers. The 22-year-old man was removed from the plane & has another shot at seeking asylum.

Deep respect for the pilot. Such is the mettle of the best of us.

“Eid Mubarak, unconditional!”

–Mir Laieeq

“India is only as democratic as China is communist, & the Islamophobic ‘feminist’ is only as feminist as ISIS is anti-imperialist.”

–Satyadeep Satya

You might be a libertarian redneck if you take umbrage at Chris Hedges’ unflattering comparison of the thuggery of Antifa to the violence of fascists but not at his support for Assad’s dictatorship & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.

What’s the appeal of the punch-a-fascist-in-the-face strategy? It has infantile macho written all over it. More to the point, it has undercover operatives written all over it. Why would anyone in their right mind think breaking bank windows & punching out rightwing protesters is an effective strategy for or against anything? At most massive protests these black bloc/Antifa punks have long been an irritant to serious activists & a sideshow used to discredit peaceful protest; most of them have nothing to do with building social movements but exist to disrupt them.

It is political power that ends wars, fights fascism, defends the oppressed. That power derives from maximum numbers engaged in consistent political activity, not in macho fisticuffs. Letting machismo guide your political choices will lead you off the deep end.

A friend asked me to go to her house to bury a possum that one of her dogs had killed. She is extremely sensitive & was squeamish about handling a dead animal. She had covered its body under three containers weighted down but when I removed them, the possum wasn’t there. Is there any truth to that “playing possum” thing? Do they actually play dead to elude capture?