The antiwar movement (such as it is) refuses to condemn or protest Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians claiming it is to take out US-backed terrorists trying to overthrow Assad’s national sovereignty. Many who oppose Syrian & Russian bombing call on the US to militarily oppose Syria & Russia whilst the US is engaged in massive bombing of civilians in Syria claiming it is to take out ISIS. No wonder so many are confused by the monstrous crimes being committed against the Syrian people.
This child is the consequence of such stinking rotten criminal politics.
The only principled antiwar demand is the end of all foreign intervention in Syria, including Russia, the US coalition, Iran, Hezbollah, & the rest of the counter-revolution. Out now!
The most valuable thing I learned from watching cable news on the Russiagate investigation & the Trump dossier: if you get stopped for a moving violation or hauled in for any other crime, just claim “opposition research”.
According to Dhaka Tribune (a useful source of information about the Rohingya refugees), the Bangladesh government has so far identified 23,487 Rohingya children as orphaned by the Burmese army. This is three-year-old Ahad who was taken to asylum by a distant relative who found him crying in the yard of his house after he couldn’t find his parents. There are no estimates of the number of women, young & old, who’ve been widowed by the genocide.
Stand with the Rohingya against genocide & for human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.
A Rohingya refugee baby playing with the beard of a Sikh volunteer from Khalsa Aid. Even midst so much suffering, we are given reasons to believe in the human race–but mostly reasons to stand with the Rohingya people.
Came across this shattering image of child workers on Shivam Kumar’s Facebook wall. There are no reliable estimates of the number of children workers in the world but they range from 215 million to 500 million who are engaged in the most dangerous work, including mining. This image is not to just indict other countries since child labor is legal in the US for farm workers–mostly Latino children. The Obama regime made it illegal to mandate protection laws for little kids who work the fields, work around chemicals & pesticides & around livestock, or use dangerous tools. The US also does not prohibit American companies from outsourcing to sweatshops in other countries that use child labor.
This is an article about child labor which I wrote in January 2012 which needs updating but shows the scope of the problem which I consider a social scourge that must be ended.
Thank you all so much for such kind get-well messages. I’m so glad to be back because I found daytime TV a wasteland. Cable news is obsessed with the two US parties who have been speculating for two days on every channel over who will be indicted today–as if the US & its two bumble-ass political parties are the epicenter of world politics. Puerto Rico got mentioned as an aside a few times a day so Democrats could make debaters points against Republicans. No mention of war, occupation, genocide. If you live outside of Washington DC, you don’t exist to Cable news so I watched police procedurals; so many I could qualify as a homicide detective. So now, back to the real world.
In a momentous declaration after a long struggle for freedom, the Catalonian parliament voted for independence from Spain today. There are massive demonstrations in celebration. We are jubilant with them.
Kashmiris are commemorating Black Day today, as they do every year, to mark 70 years since October 27th, 1947 when India forcibly & illegally laid claim to the adjoining state of Kashmir. It is a day of grieving & continued resistance to colonialism & military occupation. For most of that time, their struggle for self-determination sustained an international news blackout or was vilified as a Pakistan-based terrorist movement. Kashmiri activists brilliantly used social media to educate human rights activists around the world about the character of their struggle so that today there is a growing movement in solidarity.
We should take a moment to honor all who have died in this momentous struggle & commit ourselves to standing in solidarity with Kashmiris until they have achieved azaadi/freedom.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
Contacted a humanitarian aid group about organizing an initiative in Cox’s Bazar to assist refugees & received this message back–to my mind illustrating why the grandstanding photo ops at the camps done by Bangladeshi, Turkish, Jordanian, & Malaysian representatives are so outrageous because they justify others in doing nothing.:
“We have been getting calls regarding the situation in Burma & whether we are going to respond. For now we are holding back as relief efforts are sponsored by four governments. The Bangladesh Government is doing what it can although on a small scale. The Turkish President has asked the Bangladesh Government to open their borders & Turkey will send in the aid. Knowing how Erdogan operates the aid will be substantial. Qatar & Iran are also getting involved. Their aid will be sizable too. I’m sure Malaysia & some other countries will follow soon. The aid will probably be sufficient that’s why for now we prefer holding back.”
Beside the increasing attempts to vilify the Rohingya people as Saudi-backed terrorists, there are now articles trying to smear them culturally, including such useless crap as discussions about prostitution in the refugee camps. What is of concern to international solidarity activists is what we can do to end the genocide; what we can do about the trafficking threat to Rohingya women & orphaned children; what we can do to demand massive humanitarian aid from our governments; what we can do to demand asylum & refugee rights. We leave the vilifying, smearing, & moralizing to the lowlifes.
