A moving essay by Kashmiri Auqif Bhat showing that in war, occupation, genocide the passage of time & a new year do not mark time so much as loss & grief:

http://presstrustofkashmir.com/condemnation-vs-moral-victory-who-cares-humanity/

The cultural boycott of Israel, asking artists not to perform in Israel, has been very effective in educating about the character of Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing. Please like & share this page asking Irish opera singer Celine Byrne to honor the boycott:

https://www.facebook.com/CelineByrneDontSingForApartheidIsrael/?pnref=story

In the early 1970s, I remember standing alongside other socialists to defend the Communist Party (who we all detested) when it came under physical assault by the National Caucus of Labor Committees, a libertarian cult formed around Lyndon LaRouche. NCLC members would attack CP members outside their offices or at meetings. We defended them from assault with locked arms, often getting injured ourselves, because we opposed violence in politics regardless of the CP’s stinking politics.

The NCLC came into big money at that time, became even more crazy-pants cultish, & continued to morph toward fascism, including overtures to such groups as the KKK. But since they played no part in US antiwar, civil rights, or women’s rights politics of that era, we lost interest in following them. LaRouche became in so many ways a counterpart to David Icke who believes extraterrestrial reptiles that morphed into Jewish bankers rule planet Earth. Both are cults that share obscurantism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, & political derangement. Both are active supporters of the Assad regime.

Now, many of those socialists who stood against NCLC violence in the 1970s find themselves in the same political current as the LaRouche movement when it comes to supporting the Assad dictatorship, Putin’s bombing of civilians in Syria & his arming of the Burmese junta against the Rohingya people. What has changed them in that time? It is likely that estrangement from actual political work combined with Islamophobia have wreaked havoc on their political judgement & commitments. They’ve abandoned the principles of their youth for the paranoia & misanthropy of libertarianism. May they rot in hell for what they now justify.

There’s a whole group of CIA agents, FBI agents, military officers who waited till their pensions were secure to morph into experts on US foreign policy & leaders of the decrepit US antiwar movement which campaigns for Assad & Putin. Dictatorships don’t have a lot of reputable allies but do those who claim they oppose war have to stoop so low for allies? These “intel vets” use their tarnished authority to support Syria, Russia, Venezuela, & now Iran. They’re politically libertarians, conservative thinkers & hardly rebels against the status quo. That’s why they always support regimes & not the popular movements against them. They reek of treachery. Who but a fool would trust them?

The Assad school of falsification:

This photo of war criminal Tony Blair & journalist Olivia Solon is from the Assadist school of falsification. Solon is the investigative journalist who wrote the Guardian exposé titled “How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine” which shows how Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, & Tim Anderson worked with the Syrian & Russian regimes to vilify the White Helmet rescue workers. “It’s like a factory”, Solon reported.

Although she has an impressive résumé of investigative work, Assad supporters led by Bartlett & Beeley have employed misogyny against Solon by attempting to make her appear frivolous & insubstantial as a journalist. Because they’re professional propagandists, they have no ethical parameters to restrict their calumnies. Not even against small children.

This is a photoshop job & easily identified as such. Unless Solon has a triple-jointed right arm. Because it’s so obvious, Bartlett was asked when she posted this if it was real & she glibly responded “could be.”

Video of White Helmet rescue operations in Idlib province where Syrian & Russian air strikes, including with barrel bombs, are underway.

https://www.facebook.com/ShehabAgency.MainPage/videos/2254737671235307/?

It’s hard to understand why the White Helmets have become such a target of vilification by Assad supporters. But of course they take their cues from fascist Vanessa Beeley, the Leni Riefenstahl of the Assad regime, who’s made a global industry out of denouncing the White Helmets as terrorists & agents of the CIA. It’s only irrational if you don’t know she takes her marching orders from Assad officials. They make it her professional assignment to smear & vilify any groups or individuals, including children & rescue workers, who document Assad’s bombing of civilians. The Assad narrative is that they’re bombing terrorists, not civilians.

This White Helmet rescue worker is in the rural southern part of Idlib province where Russian & Syrian bombers & helicopters are pummeling with explosive barrels dropped on civilian homes. At least eleven people, mostly children, have been killed, dozens injured, & hundreds are being evacuated. This is another one of those pictures worth a thousand Assadist lies. How does sifting through cement rubble for bodies & survivors while Syrian & Russian bombers are circling overhead serve Al-Qaeda & ISIS terrorists? Why would those who Assadists call “jihadi head-choppers” endanger their own lives to save others?

Stand with the Syrian people by demanding the immediate cessation of bombing & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military operations from Syria.

(Photo from Muhammad Najem @muhammadnajem20 & other sources)