Facebook wants me to tell you my favorite activity as a child so you can get to know me. Will telling you that I played dolls & believed in Santa Claus till I was 10 give you any insights into my rather uncomplicated self? Or is it more than you wanted to know?

The European Union–a bastion of white supremacy that should be razed to the ground–determined a while ago to deny Afghans asylum despite almost 30 years of war & millions in exile in several countries. There have been a few reports this year of British pilots refusing to fly planes with deported Afghans. Now it’s reported that German pilots at a few airports are refusing to fly planes involved in deporting Afghans. According to the German government, at least 222 deportation flights have been halted. Included in media reports is mention that protesters are on the tarmac to oppose the deportations back to a war zone.

Imagine how powerful these remarkable acts of solidarity would be if accompanied by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of protesters around the world demanding the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of US, European, Indian, & other military operations from Afghanistan.

This event on the Rohingya struggle will be held tomorrow in Toronto, Canada. Hopefully, many in Toronto will be able to participate as part of building a solidarity movement with the Rohingya people.

It seems that almost every day thousands of Kashmiris attend funeral prayers for young men killed in hunt to kill operations by Indian occupying forces. This is the sister of Yawar Bashir cradling his head at funeral prayers today. May he Rest In Peace.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo from Getty Images)

“It may be shocking to some people around here to know discrimination of some sort happens in our society too. You feel it when someone calls a resident of Ladakh a “chowmein” {Chinese food}. You feel it when someone calls a villager a “Gresa” {ill-bred} sometimes more euphoniously “ kare sup, gaamki Gresa { Shut up, you ill-bred villager} And you feel it when for some reason someone doesn’t sit with or eat with a gujjar or anyone from a mountainous area. I guess, discrimination is not just racial nowadays. It’s also about the kind of accent you have, the kind of clothes you wear and the kind of place you are from.”

–Kashmiri Zafar Iqbal

A sophisticated academic socialist ridiculed me on Facebook for what she called “maudlin” posts about kids. There are all kinds of socialists–from those inspired to do something to end human suffering to those who think it’s avant-garde to talk in abstract, incomprehensible language about the dialectic. Applying theory to social struggle is essential. Taking distance from human beings fighting for their lives is telling of indifference or more likely of a privileged & safe distance from struggle. If you want to make a difference in politics, you give a damn about kids & you don’t give a hoot if that seems maudlin to sophisticated snobs.

The little girl covering her doll’s eyes could be from any number of places today. She is clearly a child of trauma, a child of war, occupation, persecution, or genocide. She may be imitating her mother & trying to protect the doll from witnessing & living through what she endures. In fact, this child is Palestinian from the 2014 Israeli bombing siege of Gaza that lasted seven weeks.

The politics of social transformation are politics rooted in the protection of children. In that regard, there are no dispensations for bombing civilians in order to defend “national sovereignty” for dictators.

The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement.

(Photographer not identified)

A video on Twitter showed Israeli occupying soldiers protecting Israeli settler kids assaulting smaller Palestinian kids in Hebron, West Bank. There is nothing more antisocial & monstrous than teaching children to hate, to bully, to gang up on smaller kids in the name of superiority, apartheid, militarism. This will fully boomerang on Israeli society. What kind of society can you create based on hatred & racism?

This is the remarkable Canadian-Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah responding to the mantra “Why do Palestinians teach their children to hate?” Her poem is titled “We teach life, sir”,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKucPh9xH

A little Rohingya boy helping his grandmother: according to Shafiur Rahman, who took this photo, children fetch water & firewood in the refugee camps & become vulnerable to traffickers when walking alone.

Certainly the most critical assistance to refugees is a system of protection for their children, including schooling, play areas, monitors.

My commitment to Kashmiri solidarity deepens every time a nationalist pinhead leaves droppings on my wall. Most of them sputter incoherent or snotty & you realize they don’t have a single compelling or cogent reason why all Indians should not oppose occupation & support Kashmiri self-determination. In this day & age, there’s no way to convincingly claim ignorance of the brutalities of the occupation or of Kashmiris historic claim to independence. That’s why they drag out the Wahabi jihadist stuff: the all-purpose defense for war, occupation, genocide.