While Rohingya refugees are still fleeing genocide in Burma, still crossing the border to asylum in Bangladesh, officials from the Burmese & Bangladeshi governments are working out the final details for forcible repatriation to the killing fields of Arakan state. As it stands, deportations will start next Tuesday & the forcible return of hundreds of thousands of traumatized refugees to concentration camps built by the Suu Kyi regime will be over in two years. There are no reports that the UN or any NGOs have done more than whimper out skepticism when they should be screaming bloody murder that this scheme be dropped like a hot rotten potato.

Rohingya refugees are human beings, not livestock, & they have every right under every standard of morality & democracy to decide their own fate. Forcibly returning them to Burma is nothing but a continuation of the genocide. There is no way in hell that the Burmese military junta can or will assure their safety. Warehousing them in concentration camps will only provide another chance for the military & Suu Kyi regime to carry out the ‘final solution’ to exterminate the Rohingya people.

We have to mobilize all our resources in defense of the Rohingya people & oppose their forced repatriation. That means campaigning on social media, holding rallies, screaming bloody murder against treating them like livestock, & demanding asylum in other countries with full refugee rights.

This photo is Rohingya refugees being forcibly moved from one camp to another in Bangladesh to ready them for deportation.

(Photo by Shafiur Rahman)

Just days ago, Indian Army chief Bipin Rawat said mosques & schools in Kashmir are spreading disinformation through social media & need to be controlled by the army. Yesterday, he came out with demands to snap the internet in Kashmir to disrupt terrorists & their supporters who use social media to spread radicalism. Taking his sarcasm & idiocy to their logical extremes, he added that snapping the internet was to prevent nuclear & chemical weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Despite the idiocies of this fool, which resonate with those of the pumpkin in the White House, this is a serious attack on the freedom struggle in Kashmir. There was a news blackout about the occupation of Kashmir until activists on social media changed all that to educate & build international solidarity. Most media never reported on the Kashmiri struggle until activists on social media forced them to get back ahead of the news. We cannot allow India to get away with this. If Kashmiri & Indian activists don’t stop censorship of the internet in Kashmir, they will be facing it in India–& so will the rest of us. It’s an issue of international concern since FB is already censoring on behalf of several governments & is under political pressure to get more aggressive in weeding out “fake news.”

What India is trying to keep from public exposure has nothing to do with terrorists or Pakistan but with the barbaric assaults on unarmed protesters, especially with pellet guns.

Stand with the Kashmiris in demanding India end the occupation & self-determination for Kashmir.

Photo is art work of a pellet victim by Kashmiri woman artist Hina Arif.

The Palestine Information Center reports that in 2017, fourteen Palestinian children were shot dead by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, & East Jerusalem. There have been of course no fatalities among Israeli children at the hands of Palestinians. Talk to us again about the intransigence of Palestinians in resisting more phony-assed peace talks.

Burmese dissident Maung Zarni told CNN News that forcible repatriation of Rohingya refugees to the killing fields of Burma is like sending Auschwitz survivors back to the gas chambers.

#NoForcibleRepatriationOfRohingyaRefugees

One more essential thing about the #MeToo movement now under a barrage of misogynist attacks in media: sexual assault happens to millions of children & teens, both boys & girls, & including within their families. Where’s the due process for them? Or were they also confused between seduction & assault?

#BackOffMeToo

In an interview, Obama, playing the elder statesman, rued that so many of us get our news from social media & said it’s like ‘living in a bubble.’ Actually, many of us understand a lot of things a lot better from direct contact with each other rather than having news ‘translated’ & censored for us by vested interests. What would we know so well & so profoundly without Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingya, Syrians, Afghans, & others talking to us directly about what’s really going on? Fake news is not what concerns the status quo but the exposure of arrant media bias, especially on war, occupation, genocide. If that weren’t true, so many governments would not be trying so hard to censor activists & shut them out of social media.

On behalf of Irish-German Americans, I declare the Rhineland the homeland of my people since our ancestors left there over 3,000 years ago. Move over Germany, here we come with a pottery shard from your town with the words to “Danny Boy” written all over it. We’re coming home whether you like it or not.

Usually I’m reluctant to post videos because I suspect few actually watch them. But this is a quite useful video done by Syrians opposed to the Assad dictatorship which takes on the little cabal of corrupt US activists who visited Assad, partially at his expense & under his control, & came back a Greek chorus for his regime. They all claim that the handful of people they spoke to in Damascus are ardent supporters of Assad. With infantile credulity like that, who would trust their political judgement on anything?

When they returned, they spoke at a Syrian government forum at the UN to give the cachet of UN authority. Eva Bartlett, Assad’s own Ann Coulter, is featured here & her professional propaganda deconstructed quite capably. What kind of politics is it that consider a handful of westerners the authorities on Syria & drums out Syrian voices of citizen journalists reporting from bombing zones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=KfY1Ga4oHUc

These injuries are the result of “non-lethal” pellet guns used against unarmed Kashmiri protesters. These are human rights crimes.

Stand with Kashmiris in demanding India end the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.