My most macho Chihuahua mutt is also the biggest whiner & a real momma’s boy. Separated at birth from human macho-men only by species?

That so many women have become professional propagandists, fellow travelers, & flunkeys to the Assad dictatorship is not a sign that women are achieving political parity. The professionals only prove money corrupts women as well as men; the flunkeys show a regrettable lack of political development among some women. But mostly it shows the syphilitic influence of Islamophobia & how Syria, Russia, & the US have used women to peddle war, occupation, genocide to “liberate” Muslim women.

Resharing this post from December 20th, 2016 about the fall of Aleppo because it addresses how Assad propagandists Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, & Tim Anderson mocked the suffering of children to buttress their propaganda in defense of dictatorship. That they are being exposed now as trolls & professional propagandists for Russia & Syria is long overdue.

Allow me to speak in my own voice to address the contemptible imputations against the war-traumatized children of Aleppo by Assadist propagandists, including Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, & Tim Anderson, & circulated all over social media like wild fire.

This genre of war propaganda began with mocking 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh as a staged hoax after the August 17th Russian bombing of Aleppo which killed his 10-year-old brother Ali.

One would think that at least reluctant Assadists would consider targeting children in war propaganda to be beyond the pale, especially when used to distract from Syrian & Russian carpet bombing of civilians. Regrettably they don’t.

A whole new batch of this rubbish has erupted & is now circulating on social media, including one from Sputnik News, wholly owned by the Russian government, titled “Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot of ‘Wounded Aleppo Children’.” Other Assadists say children in Syria are just ‘playing dead’ & photos to the contrary are all fake news.

This is my 50th year as an antiwar activist. I have actively opposed US wars in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama, Granada, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nicaragua & Central America, & elsewhere. Never before have I seen the suffering of children in war mocked or in any way used in propaganda. It isn’t just that they were too sacred to involve but that it would have been unthinkable to blame children who were victims of war. Assadists have no such shame.

That’s because never before has a section of the antiwar movement degenerated into enthusiastic support for war, bombing of civilians, & dictatorship as they have in Syria. They thereby separate themselves decisively from the historic traditions of anti-militarism–no matter what bizarre justifications they give for it.

The children of Syria have been subjected to daily bombing, including with barrel bombs filled with chlorine, for over five years. Why would anyone mock hundreds of thousands of small children who have suffered injures, permanent disability, war trauma & post-traumatic stress syndrome, & witnessed others buried alive in rubble or blown apart by bombs?

Call the vilification of children in Syria what it is: not just criminal & contemptible but the hallmark of stone-cold reactionary propagandists for war.

Photo is family in Aleppo.

(Photo from Facebook wall of ELEGANCE)

There are those who think I have an inordinate dislike for the British moochocracy. Oh how I hate to be underestimated. My inordinate loathing is for every single last vestige of feudalism, its social relations of superior/inferior, & its decorum of groveling & bending the knee before power. That includes moochocracy in all of its amalgams with modern capitalism.

This is a quite interesting & valuable account by Thai dissident in exile Giles Ji Ungpakorn on the interaction between feudalism & the formation of capitalism & a nation-state in Thailand.

https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-thai-monarchy-has-changed-many-times-it-can-be-abolish

This is another photo of Israeli occupying forces manhandling & arresting a young Palestinian boy at the protest today near Nablus in the occupied West Bank. You cannot tell me that engaging in such monstrous brutalities against children does not fully take its revenge on Israeli society. The exact same is true for the Indian occupying army in Kashmir.

There is no more powerful long-term & massive documentation of that reality than the psychological problems of US soldiers & veterans from its endless wars & occupations. The evidence is in PTSD & mental illness rates, levels of suicide (22 per day), alcohol & drug addiction, homelessness, incarceration, domestic violence among US veterans. You can teach the young racism & how to irrationally hate in basic training. But you cannot eviscerate their human soul & the ability to recognize another human being when they beat the crap out of them, brutalize them or shoot them down. Most soldiers are not raised to be murderers so when the military tries to inure them to violence, it creates psychos & deeply disturbed people.

Palestinians, Kashmiris, Iraqis, Syrians, Rohingya, & so many others can hardly be expected to feel empathy for the direct agents of their oppression. But those who want to build opposition to occupation & war & to rebuild the international antiwar movement need to draw on veterans to testify to the brutalities & use their experience & influence to end such violent depredations.

(Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters)

How many Israeli soldiers does it take to assault, brutalize, & arrest one Palestinian freedom fighter? Photo after photo show several ganging up on just one Palestinian child or teen. This young man is being arrested near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus at a protest today.

Just in the first five days after Trump showed the hand of the US-brokered peace process by making Jerusalem the capital of Israel, 1,175 Palestinians were injured, 4 were killed, & at least 200, including children, were arrested by Israeli occupation forces.

There is no bantustate solution to the Palestinian demand for self-determination against colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing. The only just & workable resolution is the Palestinian proposal for a democratic secular state where Palestinians & Jews can live as brothers & sisters. That begins with defeating the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, & Gaza.

Stand with Palestinians by honoring & building the economic boycott (BDS) of Israel. Check the label on every product to make sure its country of origin is not Israel.

(Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Compared to war, occupation, genocide & the refugee crises millions of people around the world are suffering, the new US tax law probably seems too penny-ante to even mention. But it will mean immense suffering for millions of children, elderly, disabled, & unemployed. It will be particularly cruel for Black, Latino, Native American, & immigrant communities. So this is a day of requiems in the US because those who could have organized opposition to this attack on working people, did not do anything.

This grieving man is holding 11-month-old Zaira at the funeral prayers of her 25-year-old mother Rubina Jan in the Shopian district about 45 km from Srinagar. The young mother was killed during one the Indian occupying armies late night prowl to kill operations when they opened fire on a group of unarmed defenseless protesters. A nearby hospital admitted over 20 injured protesters, some with gun shot injuries. Four family homes were reduced to rubble by the soldiers.

The Indian army version of the story isn’t even worth reporting. Not just because it’s lies & justifications but because of the casual disregard army officials express for Kashmiri human life. This kind of barbaric operation is India’s version of counterinsurgency & it’s worth noting that India contracted with Israel to train its counterinsurgency troops.

Our sincere condolences to the family & friends of Rubina Jan & our solidarity with those who have been injured & lost their homes. May our sister Rubina Rest In Peace.

(Photo by AFP)

In response to the Guardian exposé, Vanessa Beeley–the Leni Riefenstahl of the Assad dictatorship & a fascist who openly supports the Burmese junta in its genocide of the Rohingya people–is declaring herself “the direct voice of the Syrian people” & claiming that any attempts to smear her are attempts to smear & silence Syrian voices. On the contrary. Many of us, like the Guardian exposé, work assiduously to show that Beeley is a ventriloquist dummy for the Assad regime. Those are the Syrian voices she represents.

Bartlett & Beeley came out of nowhere only a few years ago to declare themselves independent journalists & experts on Syria. Some of us have spent decades longer trying to understand the politics of our own countries & would never presume to expertise on revolution & counter-revolution in Syria after only several months of blogging. As I wrote just one year ago: “It cannot go without protest that the promotion of two western women–who’ve spent a total of five or six weeks in Syria traveling by their own admission with Assad officials & Syrian military security–over the voices of Syrian journalists & activists is a parody of white supremacy.”

The truth of the matter is, Bartlett & Beeley did not come out of nowhere. As the Guardian article shows & their own articles repeatedly boast, they have contacts at the highest levels of the Syrian & Russian governments. They are not journalists; they are professional propagandists for the Assad dictatorship. The authentic voices of the Syrian revolution are in exile, in Assad’s gulag, dead, or under aerial bombardment by Syrian, Russian, & US-coalition warplanes.

There’s not much confusion under the Trump regime which class runs the US government. But is a pumpkin the best the elite can come up with to represent them?