Some Bangladeshi media now refer to Rohingya refugees as “infiltrators.” In international Islamophobic jargon, an infiltrator is always a Muslim to associate them with terrorism. How about we put up banners & billboards declaring “Infiltrators welcome here.”
Je suis infiltrator.
(Photo of Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh from dainikcoxsbazar, Bangladeshi media which calls them “infiltrators.”)
Isn’t it about time to acknowledge that Kofi Annan has played his part in covering for genocide against the Rohingya & is now completely irrelevant if not criminally collusive with the genocidaires?
Al Jazeera reports that as of today, 800,000 of the 1.3 million Rohingya living in Arakan state have fled for their lives. Dishonestly, Al Jazeera also reported that the exodus began on August 25th after the Burmese army retaliated to ARSA attacks on 30 police stations & an army base–allegations that came from the Burmese military & are therefore doubtful if not altogether lies. The implication to this narrative, repeated by media & governments around the world, is that Rohingya extremists incited a genocide when it has been shown quite conclusively that the Burmese army was preparing this genocidal offensive weeks in advance & only a few months after the last offensive had ceased. ARSA hasn’t been in existence for even a year & could not possibly be so organized or equipped to pull off any major operations against one of the most brutal & well-equipped military forces in the world.
Stand with the Rohingya against these lies & vilifications. They are our brothers & sisters. How we respond to this genocide will determine the fate of suffering humanity around the world. Either we stand with the oppressed or with barbarism.
This woman at a refugee camp in Bangladesh is grieving a beloved family member who died from injuries inflicted by the Burmese army as they fled for their lives.
(Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)
It’s not to be sniffed at that Rania, who calls herself queen of Jordan, has vigorously denounced the Rohingya genocide & actually toured the camps in Cox’s Bazar. Will there then be massive humanitarian aid forthcoming from Jordan? Will Jordan stop preventing Syrians fleeing carpet bombing from entering its borders? Will it stop turning away all Palestinian refugees fleeing from Syria?
What’s not quite right about Rania’s tour is that she’s touring in her capacity as a board member of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The IRC is Kissinger’s ‘charity’ with a board that includes Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, business magnates & bankers from JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, & several leading Zionists. IRC activities in most countries are secret but appear quite nefarious–as you’d expect from a Kissinger operation. If the IRC wants to make itself effective in Burma, it’s in a position to focus on getting the US to reimpose sanctions & to ban US investment in Burma; it should focus on getting Israel to stop selling arms to Burma. Otherwise, we might suspect Rania is fronting for IRC’s nefarious intent with the Rohingya refugees.
(Photo is Rania touring refugee camp)
So a guy tells me I’m a narcissist with a “Wahhabi fan base” & challenges me to a debate. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t block him too after you stopped laughing. My seven-year-old neighbor could kick his ass.
Social media makes the unbearable suffering of millions of men, women, & children so immediate, so overwhelming. War in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan & elsewhere; occupation in Palestine & Kashmir; genocide in Burma; death squads in the Philippines; millions of refugees shut out of one country after another. Social media also makes forging bonds of solidarity & building an international movement to stand against war, occupation, & genocide more possible than ever before in human history. We can feel overcome sometimes by being witness to the scale of suffering & the power of the oppressors. But ours is a a beautiful world & we cannot allow it to be a cauldron of hatred & oppression. We can change the world if we commit ourselves to working with others to do so. No human being is alien to us. An injury to one of ours is an injury to all of us.
It turns out the US Congress didn’t know the Pentagon had 800 troops in Niger. We know Commander-in-Chief Dumb-as-a-Stump Trump thinks Africa is a country & Niger is a river in Egypt. So then who is formulating US military policies & deciding where to deploy troops? The American people require an explanation for this but even if we never get one we demand the removal of all US troops from the African continent, from the Middle East, & from all the other countries where they are deployed.
My Facebook block list is so long it’s going into its tenth volume. Some consider that a sign of my intolerance or unwillingness, even inability to debate those who disagree. As I have said before, one of the arts of politics is knowing when to save your breath. It took me forty years of trying to persuade my conservative family that socialism was not necessarily evil before I smartened up & let them believe what they wanted. If anyone thinks it worth their time to debate Stalinists, Assadists or other fascists, let me know & I’ll connect you to my block list. I give you forty years of wandering in the desert to also smarten up. But why waste your time when there is solidarity to build?
The Hands Off Syria Coalition, in its support for the Assad dictatorship, has destroyed the antiwar movement, divided & weakened the Palestinian solidarity movement, finished off what was left of a corrupt socialist movement. Now leading figures from the Hands Off Syria crowd are coming out with analyses of the Rohingya genocide to support Burma’s fascist military junta. They ignore genocide & portray the Rohingya as dominated by Wahhabi/Salafi terrorists armed by Saudi Arabia. Among those leading figures are fascists Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley & Sara Flounders, a Stalinist activist since the 1960s.
Let me speak in the first person here since Flounders is an activist of my generation whose politics I have been at odds with since the 1960s. Her sectarian politics in the US antiwar movement have assured it remains fractured & insignificant. If the lilliputian cult she leads called Workers World cannot control the movement they do everything in their power to destroy it as a movement. So much so that under Flounders & other erstwhile socialists like Jeff Mackler, the US antiwar movement is led by retired FBI & CIA agents. For years, despite endless wars of monstrous barbarity, Flounders, Mackler, & other left cults refused to collaborate in united antiwar actions but each held their own which they could control. What brought them together in the Hands Off Syria Coalition was their mutual political corruption into sycophants to state power & supporters of fascism in Syria. They are now locked in the death grip of their fascist allies like Assad, David Duke, & other extremist right groups around the world. After they merged in the Hands Off Syria Coalition with David Icke & his disciples Bartlett & Beeley (who believe extraterrestrial reptiles that morphed into Jewish bankers run the world), it’s only a matter of time before they dissolve or collapse into a pile of horse manure.
Almost everything Flounders writes or speaks about Burma & the Rohingya people is a lie to support the fascist military junta. Her interviews & articles are being spread by Bartlett & Beeley who function as ventriloquist dummies for the Assad regime & on their own are incapable of thought. In a monotone that lacks all charisma but has the death rattle of fascism. Flounders explains her support for Burmese fascism & genocide by claiming the US only supports the Rohingya because the US wants military bases in Burma. She never does get around to explaining how the US supports the Rohingya or how she knows the Saudis support the Rohingya with arms & training. Instead, she switches the subject to Yemen to pretend Assadists & other fascists are not heartless monsters & to avoid condemnation of the genocide against the Rohingya people. How long will people allow these demented Stalinists & fascists to disorient them about whether to stand with fascists or with freedom struggles?
Woman in blue in this photo is Flounders disrupting a tribute concert to the White Helmet rescue workers held last March in Grand Central Station, NYC.
Stand with the Rohingya people against genocide & in their struggle for full human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.
One of the worst aspects of women’s struggle against violence is a sense of powerlessness, sometimes almost paralysis. That’s true of verbal abuse as well as physical assault. But in physical assault, it can become a life & death matter. This video was done for Kashmiri women but the self-defense techniques in the last half are invaluable to know for girls & women as well as men who are physically assaulted.