British foreign secretary Boris Johnson is the latest politician to show up in Bangladesh to push the Burma-Bangladesh forced deportation plan for Rohingya refugees. The Dhaka Tribune reported that he urged a “quick repatriation” claiming “any delay might complicate the issue.” This dirtball politician had the temerity to compare the Rohingya “exodus” to that of Palestinians in 1948. The ethnic cleansing comparison is not inapt at all but it is odious coming from Johnson, a Tory known for his racism, a strong supporter of Israel, & a voluble opponent of BDS. On a trade mission trip to Israel & the West Bank in November 2015, he was disinvited from meeting with Palestinian business groups after publicly ridiculing BDS in Israel. It comes as no surprise that officials from the Palestinian Authority proceeded to meet with him since they officially opposed BDS until recently.

After meeting with Sheikh Hasina, Johnson proceeded on to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. He later tweeted that he urged Suu Kyi to back a “full & independent investigation” into Rohingya claims of “persecution” & to create safe conditions for refugees forced to return to Burma. He also spent a few hours touring a torched village in Arakan state before returning to the UK. Does Johnson want another “independent” investigation like the Kofi Annan whitewash? Did he tour the concentration camps (without sanitation facilities) the Suu Kyi civilian government is building to house forcibly returned Rohingya refugees? Did he investigate the mass graves? Were nearby torched villages still smoldering? Is he actually so stupid as to believe the Rohingya will be safe in the killing fields of Burma whilst they continue to pour across the border into Bangladesh? Or does he just not give a rat’s ass about human life? At least more than he’s concerned about protecting British trade & investments in Burma which are among the highest of any other nation?

Stand with the Rohingya people & demand no forced deportation & asylum in any countries they choose with visas & full refugee rights.

(Photo of Johnson & Hasina from February 9th Dhaka Tribune)

Another valuable article by Thai dissident in exile Giles Ji Ungpakorn about movement building against the military junta in Thailand but applicable to movement building everywhere:

https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/verbal-solidarity-is-not-enough/

Couldn’t be more brilliantly said:

“Barge into a mourning village. Fire like you are in a war. Kill three & wound a dozen. Shield the killers & blame the slain. And then when the population picks up stones & guns, blame Pakistan & radicalization.”

–Kashmiris need freedom Facebook wall

To my mind, it should be emphasized that the strengthening ties between Modi, Netanyahu, & Mahmoud Abbas represent a significant threat to the Palestinian & Kashmiri freedom struggles against occupation & for self-determination. Palestinian solidarity has already been fractured by support among some for the Assad dictatorship & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians, claiming they are bombing ‘jihadis’. Some may be thrown off by Modi’s feigned support for the Palestinian struggle despite the persecution & pogroms against Muslims in India & the brutal occupation of Kashmir. The common threat is Islamophobia & accusations of Saudi-backed ‘jihadism’ in Syria, Kashmir, Gaza, & also among the Rohingya in Burma.

A friend once suggested I set up a page just for my Kashmir posts but to me that would isolate the Kashmiri freedom struggle from that of Palestinians, Rohingya, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Somalis, & all others at a time when international bonds of active solidarity are absolutely imperative to strengthen the struggles of all living with war, occupation, persecution, genocide. We take our cues from freedom fighters, not from rotten-to-the-core politicians. Arms sales talk louder than words.

Photo is recent protests in Srinagar against the killing of civilians. These are our guides in politics.

(Photo from Rising Kashmir)

This child waiting in a clinic in Kafr Batna, eastern Ghouta, will someday understand the Assadist claim that bombing her & her family & neighbors to protect the sovereignty of Assad’s dictatorship was the highest political good & not military barbarism. When she’s old enough, she can read those long-winded socialist tracts quoting Stalin, sometimes even Lenin, to justify the bombing of civilians as part of defeating capitalism. She’ll understand why they say morality is an impediment in politics. She can also read the Russian media & Assadist propaganda reports about the nefarious politics of the White Helmet rescue workers who pulled her & her family out of rubble & then she’ll be able to see the geopolitical necessity of vilifying them & defending dictatorship & the bombing of civilians. Likely if not certainly, she will reject it as the political treachery it is & be able to recognize fascist thought when she reads it. Because she just barely lived through it.

The only principled demands are for the immediate cessation of Syrian, Russian, US coalition bombing of civilians & for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.

(Photo taken February 6th by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

There are all sorts of things operating in Modi’s visit to Ramallah to visit the traitorous Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas holds the titles president of Palestine & president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) but both are appointed positions. He wasn’t elected to either one but was appointed by hacks with the same rotten politics he has. There is no state of Palestine. One can hardly call militarily occupied territories being gradually but massively expropriated by Israel & encroached on by Israeli settlements anything more than bantustates. That’s what makes the suggestion of a two-state solution so malignant & detestable, not to mention, unworkable. Abbas’ chief purpose is to administer the Oslo Accords & repress Palestinian resistance to the forcible expropriation of their lands under that US-brokered “peace plan.”

Abbas is a whipped puppy so why would Modi who presides over a state of nearly a billion people pay a state visit to the West Bank when the combined population of the West Bank, Gaza, & East Jerusalem is less than 4 million? Why would Modi pretend to play both sides of the street by having diplomatic relations with both Israel & the Palestinian Authority? The answer is that there are no divided loyalties here. Abbas is not a Palestinian freedom fighter & has nothing in common with them. He’s a two-bit shyster whose mission in life–for which he is well-remunerated–is to sell the Palestinian struggle down the river. His allegiance is solely to Israel. It’s possible, with Trump blowing smoke about cutting off funds to the PA, that Abbas wants to play Trump by asking Modi to replace the US as mediator in Palestine-Israel negotiations. But since those negotiations have led to the Oslo Accords, there isn’t much left for Abbas to betray.

Palestinians gain nothing from a Modi-Abbas alliance. Modi, however, derives legitimacy for the occupation of Kashmir. There are people in the world who actually believe that Abbas represents Palestinians. By feigning diplomatic ties to the Palestinians under the aegis of Abbas, Modi believes he can more easily undermine & isolate the Kashmiri freedom struggle. Regardless of his words, his allegiance is not with Palestinians but with Israel which supplies India with military equipment & trains its counterinsurgency forces in barbarism.

While in Ramallah, Abbas awarded Modi the Grand Collar of the State of Palestine, an honorific which appears to have been invented recently & has already compensated for lack of history with considerable disgrace. Its three other recipients include King Salman of Saudi Arabia (the guy who beheads dissidents & has been bombing Yemen for nearly three years), King Hamad of Bahrain (the guy who crushed the Bahrain Arab Spring uprising by the most brutal means, including pellet guns & incarceration of dissidents), & president Xi Jinping of China (the guy helping rescue Israel from the impact of BDS by billions in investments & exchanges–among other criminalities).

The economic & cultural boycott is not sufficient to win the struggle against Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing but it is an essential way to educate & broaden solidarity with the Palestinian people who will someday, without doubt, rise up & throw Abbas & his lieutenants to the curb & choose a leadership worthy of them & their historic struggle.

(Photo of Modi & Abbas in Ramallah from Reuters)

Someone has chosen just this moment to bait me on the Kashmiri Pandit issue & say my support for Kashmiris against occupation is wrong-headed. My impatience runneth over. Writing about executions of young people & other barbarisms is not like writing romance novels.

This is a cell phone photo of 18-year-old Saima Wani taken by her younger brother shortly before she was shot in the head on January 24th in a hunt to kill operation by Indian security forces chasing down two young militants, one of them her brother Sameer Ahmad Wani. She died on Saturday after 18 days on life support. Her brother Sameer & his associate Firdous Ahmad, both recent recruits to militancy, were executed on the spot since due process is no part of military occupation. Seventeen–year-old Shakir Ahmad Mir, who lived nearby & may have been among those protesting the military operation, died hours later in hospital from bullet injuries. Twelve-year-old Musharaf Fayaz picked up an unexploded shell from the hunt to kill operation after troops left without clearing the area of unexploded ordnance. He brought it home to play with & it exploded, causing massive head injuries. He later died in hospital. Another 20-year-old girl who suffered a bullet wound in the head is still recovering in hospital.

Saima Wani’s funerals prayers were attended by so many thousands of mourners that funeral prayers had to be repeated. As Ather Zia has expressed it: “mourning is resistance.”

Our deepest condolences to the Wani family who have now lost two of their beloved just in the past few weeks. Saima & Sameer have a sister & brother in addition to their parents. May both martyrs Rest In Peace after a life struggling against occupation & for freedom.

#Azadi.

The struggle of the Rohingya people is going to be in the center of world politics (regardless of the lack of media coverage) as long as genocide continues, as long as forced deportation is being organized, as long as they live in squalid refugee camps without rights, & so long as they are denied asylum in any country they choose with visas & full refugee rights. Their struggle is our struggle. The challenge for our generation, actually our mission, is to rebuild the institutions of human solidarity with those enduring war, occupation, persecution, & genocide. How we do that determines the future of all humanity.

This is a brief video of Rohingya refugees in India where a Rohingya man eloquently lays out the problems they face as refugees.

https://www.facebook.com/newsclickonline/videos/1190661547732078/?hc_ref=ARSXO3YoSUBlcNqPLe-

There’s another big flap because the Duluth, Minnesota school board excluded “Huckleberry Finn” & “To Kill a Mockingbird” from the required curriculum because of their use of the n-word & other racist insults. Every time a school board removes the books from compulsory reading lists, a chorus of jackasses starts braying against censorship & claiming the books are classics of American literature. They’re not burning the damn books but merely replacing them in the curriculum & making them optional.

This dispute originally erupted in the late 1970s, notably after the civil rights movement, because Black school kids forced to read “Huckleberry Finn” were traumatized & often faced taunting from white schoolmates. It’s been debated by scholars for years, with many prominent Blacks like Toni Morrison defending the book. The chief offense in “Huckleberry Finn” is not that it uses the n-word but that through & through to its regrettable ending it is white supremacist literature of the white savior genre. A rascal white street kid rescues an adult runaway slave. White people swoon at that moment in the book when Huck chooses to defy society’s norm that he turn Jim over to authorities & instead help him escape up the Mississippi River. If that ain’t the very essence & origins of white savior literature & film, then what is it?

Mark Twain was a wonderful satiric short story writer but he was a racist who went AWOL as an irregular Confederate soldier, loved minstrel shows, & hated who he called “injuns.” His personal friends were former Yankee generals leading the wars of extermination west of the Mississippi. Black school kids pick up on what adult whites do not so “Huckleberry Finn” should not be imposed on little kids, white, Black, or brown, in a compulsory curriculum but should be taught as the origins of white savior literature so that this genre can be recognized & regarded with contempt.

(Photo is cover of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”)

{PS: On “To Kill a Mockingbird” which I recently read with my book club, I will have to reread it in the context of Black kid’s criticisms.)