This afternoon I’m giving a friend a shiatsu for sciatica & needed to clean the house. Anyone with dogs (or for that matter kids) knows why that is necessary even if you’re not a habitual slob. So mindlessly I left the morning news on while I cleaned & was mesmerized that for at least four hours (yes, it did take me that long to clean thoroughly) news commentators spoke of nothing but speculations about what the orange halfwit in the White House will say at his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Not one word, nary a peep about any of the several US wars, military occupations, the Rohingya genocide, the millions of refugees.

“Is our blood so cheap that it is spilled over like water? On our land and by ramming our homes, these brutal indian occupying forces intoxicated with the might of power, are assassinating our generations. For how long will we endure this barbarism ? For how long shall we become victims of the nefarious tactics of these deceitful pro-Indian politicians ?

India through the might of their forces and with the support of puppet rulers here are fighting a war with the Kashmiri Muslims. On the borders against the powerful forces, their might looks so feeble that it is mussled to the ground, and they shower this prevailing anger on the Kashmiris. We through unity have to fight and stop these addled powers. And make them aware that our blood is not so cheap that a low-grade man in uniform will keep on spilling it over. May Allah bestow our martyrs with Jannah!!”

–Sameer Ul Haq

Someone is insistently asking me to change my profile photo because I’m laughing while reporting the terrible suffering in the world. I know many people are extremely sensitive to human suffering but my harshest critics who mostly share affinities with ferocious gorillas are not among them. So I don’t know how to answer my sensitive critic except to say the moralism of his criticism is beyond me. I could do the funereal thing, grieve my way through my life, make a public display of my grief & outrage, but all of us who care about others love life, love other human beings who make us laugh & cry, & want that all of us have life, laughter, & love more abundantly. That’s just the way it is.

Another three civilians were killed in the Shopian district of south Kashmir on Saturday, days after the Indian occupying army killed two militants, one civilian, & critically injured three other civilians before they demolished the home where the militants were hiding, possibly with other family members. Indian army officials explained that a convoy of armored vehicles was passing through a town when they were surrounded by a group of 100 to 120 “unprovoked & intense” stone pelters whose numbers quickly grew to 200 to 250. According to army officials, this group of protesters armed only with rocks caused extensive damage to the armored vehicles, tried to set them on fire, & then tried to snatch a weapon from one soldier & lynch him. So, army officials explained, “considering the extreme gravity of the situation of the army” they were forced to open fire in self defense to prevent the lynching of the soldier & the torching of the armored vehicles. That’s the Indian Army version of how three unarmed civilians were shot down in cold blood.

It’s difficult for Shopian residents to tell the real story, one that makes sense about what happened yesterday because the Indian Army has completely blocked the internet in the district. The only reason they snapped the internet is to prevent the truth about the murderous assault on unarmed civilians from being heard around the world & to sabotage every effort by Kashmiri activists to build opposition to the occupation of Kashmir. At this point, there isn’t a single lie the Indian Army can say in its defense. Their death toll just this week is six; the injury toll is at least twelve. The trauma & PTSD rate is 100%.

Photo is an Indian Army soldier in occupied Kashmir. You can see how helpless the poor guy is against unarmed civilians.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo from Times Now News)

https://www.change.org/p/jammu-and-kashmir-govt-justice-for-ashifa?

The Taliban has taken responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. They loaded up an ambulance with explosives, drove it past military checkpoints into an area of government offices, & detonated it. The US government denounced the “inhumane disregard for human life.” It sure as hell is ruthless & inhumane. But the question remains: who is providing arms & explosives to the Taliban (& now ISIS) that they can carry on war for over 16 years against one of the most high-tech militaries in the world? Hasn’t the US satellite surveillance system been able to trace how weapons are getting into the hands of Taliban & ISIS fighters so they can cut off the supply route?

But there’s another question: was the “inhumane disregard for human life” worse than over 16 years of US-coalition occupation & bombing? Was it more inhumane than when the US dropped the 22,000 pound Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB)–the largest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal–on Afghanistan last April? Because Afghan lives are only “collateral damage” to the US Pentagon, there was no report on the number of civilians who were killed.

There’s a news blackout about the US-coalition war on Afghanistan. But we cannot cease demanding the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-coalition forces from Afghanistan. We cannot let it become the forgotten war. Afghans are out brothers & sisters & our taxes are paying for those bombs.

US-coalition out of Afghanistan now!

(Photo is MOAB dropped on Afghans in April 2017)

Local activists held a Stop the Wall rally today to save the nearby Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge which is 2,000 acres of federal property on the US-Mexico border. The Trump forces plan on mowing a wall through the refuge & using eminent domain to confiscate adjacent farm land for the wall. This would be an environmental disaster & for the human rights of refugees on the US southern border, it would be monstrous.

Beside borderland poets & musicians, speakers included DACA recipients (undocumented youth who came to the US with their parents & who Trump wants to deport), environmentalists, the leader of the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe who have ancestral rights to the land. I was honored to speak about the international crisis of refugees from war, persecution, genocide, sweatshop economics & economic plunder.

I’ve been to hundreds of protests in my life & listened to hundreds of boring speakers but everyone who spoke at this rally was impassioned & brilliant & a testimony to the commitment to tear down these walls that divide the human race. One of the most heartening things was seeing so many of my generation along with so many youth standing together against the wall & for refugee rights.

Thank you to Ava Leal for her role in organizing this event & to the other organizers & volunteers, including Emilia Alvarez Gamboa, who made it run so smoothly. It was inspiring for all who participated.

No human being is alien to us.

(Photo of rally participants by Leslie Gower)

The sexual assault of hundreds of minor athletes in US gymnastics once again exposes the complicity of sports, medical, political officials at the highest levels of power. This could not have gone on for 30 years without many of them knowing & winking it away as a boys will be boys thing. A great big salute to the women athletes coming forward so fearlessly & powerfully to testify & denounce.

#MeTooSisters

Kashmir Life journal has an article titled “Chaigund Encounter: The Complete Story” about the Indian Army operation on Wednesday. To suggest that ‘indiscriminate firing’ by two militants was responsible for the death of a 17-year-old teenager, bullet wounds in the head to two young girls, & serious head injuries to a young boy is not so much the “complete story” as apologetics for Indian Army hunt to kill operations. According to form in these operations, the occupying army set up a cordon around a village where informants told them militants were hiding. The article claims the army ordered residents out of their homes but it’s far more likely that residents came rushing out to protest & obstruct the army from shooting up the neighborhood.

Even if the young men were militants, the Indian occupying army has no rights to usurp due process in their apprehension. Since when is it allowable under the rule of law to set out to kill rather than apprehend? How is it legal to use such a massive arsenal against two inexperienced, poorly trained, & ill-equipped young militants maybe with two rifles between them? Since when is it legal to endanger hundreds of civilians in the process of executing two militants? Where does the law allow soldiers to destroy the entire structure of homes just to kill two militants who were barely out of their teens.

Both young men were killed. But so was 17-year-old Shakir Ahmad Mir who lived nearby. Eighteen-year-old Saima Wani was shot in the brain & remains in critical condition, 20-year-old Bhat Sami were shot in the head, & 12-year-old Najar Mushaira Fayaz sustained head injuries, damage to both eyes, & internal hemorrhaging from a live shell explosion. One of the young girls was a resident of the house that was besieged & destroyed. Was she in the home when Indian soldiers started shelling it? Is that where she was killed? The other girl was a sister of one of the militants who was killed so perhaps their injuries were not so random as reported.

The two militants killed were Sameer Ahmad & Firdous Ahmad, both very recent recruits to militancy. Their funeral prayers were attended by thousands as was the funeral of Shakir Ahmad Mir. May they Rest In Peace.

This photo shows a woman looking through the damaged walls of the destroyed home. Consider what kind of arsenal was used to do such damage against two young men who maybe each had a rifle.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Aasif Shafi)

On the one hand, accusing activists like me of pandering to Muslims or supporting Islamic terrorists is amusing. On the other hand, it isn’t amusing one whit because of the force of Islamophobia as a political weapon & battle cry in war, occupation, & genocide. Part of the issue is the outright persecution of Islam but the heart of it today is that Muslims have been in the forefront of struggle for democracy from Palestine & the Arab Spring uprisings to Kashmir to Arakan state to the massive military counterrevolutions in Syria & Yemen.

If you don’t recognize that harsh glaring reality, then it’s likely you don’t understand much at all about what’s going on in the world & that you will, like so many well-meaning lost souls, end up supporting Syrian, Russian, or even Saudi coalition & US coalition bombing of civilians. Is it a coincidence do you think that anti-Semitism often combines with Islamophobia, especially in Syria? If you don’t recognize these orchestrated nationalist & racist hatreds, you end up on the side of holocausts as in Germany & now in Syria, Yemen, Arakan state.