We should take a moment to honor & pay respects to 23-year-old Waseem Shah, a rebel who was killed along with fellow rebel Naseer Mir. Last Saturday, police, CRPF (counterinsurgency) & army troops set up a hunt to kill operation based on information that Shah was hiding in the area. Earlier in the week, five other young rebels were also killed in such operations. We don’t have to agree that guerrilla warfare is the wisest strategy to honor the lives of these young men. Kashmiris have a right to defend themselves by any means necessary & they were committed to the freedom struggle against a brutal occupation. For that they lost their lives. For that thousands of Kashmiris honored them with a massive funeral procession. For that, we honor them. May they Rest In Peace.

The photo is a family member kissing young Waseem goodbye.

(Photo by Bilal Ahmad)

This is what genocide is all about. This is why mealy-mouthed objections are an insult to the humanity of the Rohingya people & refusals to condemn become collusion:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/rohingya-survivor-army-threw-baby-fire-171013083525896.html

An article by Ahmad Ajaz who said: “I grew up in conflict-ridden Kashmir which gives me a clear picture of how conflict & violence can burn an image in a children’s mind & can lead to prolonged psychological effects among children.”

http://www.trtworld.com/opinion/we-are-creating-a-lost-generation-of-rohingya-children-11351

US ambassador to Burma Scot Marciel met this week with chief architect of the Rohingya genocide General Min Aung Hlaing. According to a report about the meeting on the general’s FB page, he spent most of the meeting explaining to Marciel that British colonialists were responsible for the problems in Arakan state when in 1824 they brought in “Bengalis” to work as farm laborers & that these Bengalis who call themselves Rohingya remain “illegal immigrants” after nearly 200 years. The general never did get around to addressing accusations of genocide–& it doesn’t appear Marciel pressed him on the issue–but he accused ARSA of killing Hindus & Rohingya collaborators. He also claimed the number of Rohingya fleeing Burma–now estimated at over 520,000–is an exaggeration.

Out of the dozens of media reports about the meeting, not a one mentions what Marciel said in response to all this rubbish. Did he just sit there dumb as a stump nodding his head? Because Marciel knows exactly what is going on in Arakan state. It is not true the US cannot do anything to stop this genocide. He could cut the fake history lesson short by threatening to reimpose sanctions on Burma & prevent US companies from continuing to invest billions in the junta’s neoliberal economic program. He could talk just as bluntly & threateningly to the general as the US does to Iran & North Korea. Enough of this playing stupid stuff!

The 27-nation members of the European Union will vote Monday on a proposal to cut ties to the Burmese military & has threatened sanctions to stop the “disproportionate use of force” against the Rohingya. This is a dog & pony show if there ever was one. The EU already has sanctions against cooperation with the military junta but that hasn’t stopped Germany, Austria, Italy, & Belgium from touring the generals through their munitions plants & courting them for future sales. What they should be voting on is a proposal to reimpose sanctions against investments in Burma. That could bring the Burmese economy to its knees & stop the genocide.

Photo is Marciel & the general at their meeting which accomplished absolutely nothing for the Rohingya people. It’s just not profitable for the US to speak out against genocide.

(Photo from Coconuts Media Limited)

Faebook & Twitter censorship is becoming more of an issue & has actually been brought more to the fore by its brazen censorship of posts by Kashmiri & Rohingya activists & their supporters. It’s been a free speech/civil liberties issue for a long time & a matter of considerable alarm to repressive regimes. Of all the places one would expect a cogent discussion of the issue, Forbes magazine is not among them. But this is a quite useful article on the problems the oppressed face in trying to get out the truth about their struggles. There is a free speech battle looming over censorship on social media.

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/10/14/how-social-media-can-silence-instead-of-empower/

The Australian government refuses outright to condemn Burma over genocide against Rohingya. Remind me again which countries have offered more than feigned sympathy for the refugees?

Bobby was a longtime co-worker of mine who used to tell me his coming-of-age stories. He & his older brother John (who I also knew from work) grew up in Chicago in the late 1940s. Their parents both worked for the railroad & they lived in company housing which was not segregated so many of their childhood companions were white & racism was no part of Bobby or John’s consciousness. When John was 9 or 10-years-old & Bobby about 8, their parents split up & their dad took the boys back to Memphis where his family lived. Memphis was under Jim Crow law.

Bobby described how overwhelmed he & John were facing racist hatred & segregation for the first time. Not just overwhelmed, especially John found it absolutely intolerable. So at the age of 11, John convinced Bobby to run away with him to get away from Jim Crow. For several years, they became migrant workers along with workers from Mexico & traveled the country following the harvests. When they were old enough to apply for regular jobs, they settled in Lynn, Massachusetts, a working class suburb of Boston. After he had a few bucks in his pocket, Bobby took a bus back to Memphis to visit his dad. He had been away from Jim Crow so long he’d forgotten the legal humiliations so when the bus stopped across the Mason-Dixon Line so passengers could eat lunch, Bobby followed the other passengers off the bus into the cafe. It became one of those slow-motion moments when everyone in the place turned around to glare at him because he was in the whites-only section. He was directed around to the back of the building where Blacks were allowed to eat. It always amused him that the cook for both sections was a Black fellow.

Even in Massachusetts in the 1960s, Blacks were excluded from the better-paying jobs so Bobby moved on to California for several years. He returned to Lynn in the late 1970s shortly before the local General Electric plant was under affirmative action court orders to hire Blacks, Latinos, women. We were affirmative action hires & that’s how I met him & John.

An article by Usman A Khan Tahir on violence against Pakistani refugees in Greece:

This article is quite important because there is so little reporting on refugees in Greece, Turkey, elsewhere in Europe, & the US when it is one of the most important human rights issues of our times, directly associated with war, occupation, genocide, sweatshop economics, & plunder of resources.

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/10/14/pakistanis-in-greece-under-threat-of-racial-violence-embassy-takes-notice/