It is not gratuitous or politically factional to object to the authority & leadership “retired” CIA & FBI agents & former US State Department & military officers have in the corrupted antiwar movement. The most prominent among them are Ray McGovern (CIA), Ann Wright (US Army colonel & State Department official), & Colleen Rowley (FBI). They are all of the 1960s political generation but instead of joining with the millions protesting US wars, beginning with the Vietnam War, they committed their lives to working in service to the Pentagon. It wasn’t until retirement & the Iraq War in 2003 that they found their souls & transubstantiated into leading voices of a weak & fractured antiwar movement.

Let me say, in the interests of full disclosure, that Colleen Rowley is the FBI agent who by her own admission to me flagged my criminal record for using a Weapon of Mass Destruction in 2000, just a few years before morphing into a leader of those she had previously been spying on. In 2009, she was unwilling to lift a finger to get that removed from my record, making me unable to get jobs requiring a security clearance.

Transformation & political change are possible at any age so it could be just coincidence that their pensions were secure before they did their morphing. But the problem is that they haven’t changed from their Pentagon days. Now they are ardently promoting Assad & Putin & have helped corrupt the US antiwar movement by supporting Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. They’re on the same side as the US when it comes to counterrevolution in Syria, regardless of their new anti-imperialist rhetoric. They advance conspiracy theories in place of political analyses & promote the writings & speak on panels & platforms with outright fascists. It was McGovern who admitted in a 2004 interview with Mother Jones that their group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity collaborates with “virtually all the agencies,” including “very distinguished operations officers, & from the FBI, Defense Intelligence, from the NSA, Army Intelligence, & from the State Department.” So the question emerges: just how independent are these “retirees” from the US Pentagon?

If each has nearly 50 years of working, spying, & doing analyses for the Pentagon, why did it take till 2003 to oppose the many US wars millions of Americans have been marching against since 1965? What was it about the barbarism of the Iraq War that snapped for them when Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Somalia, & all the other barbarous wars went right over their heads? Just asking for a friend–that little boy being rescued by a White Helmet in Afrin City where Syrian & Russian bombs are “falling like rain.”

(Photo from White Helmets)

A White Helmet rescue worker lowers a small girl in her pajamas to safety after Syrian bombers tore the face off her family home in an early morning bombing raid. It is reported that every single town in Eastern Ghouta is being bombed by Syrian & Russian bombers. In Idlib, it is reported that bombers are targeting hospitals, clinics, & ambulances.

While White Helmets risk & lose their lives rescuing people in the bombing raids, Russian & Syrian media along with professional propagandists & corrupt antiwar activists are vilifying the rescue workers as al-Qaeda (al-Nusra) operatives planning a chemical weapon “provocation” using chlorine gas. Assad’s best defense is an offense accusing rescue workers of the war crimes routine for the Syrian military. There’s a simple measure for cutting through the propaganda & confusions: those who drop the bombs are the war criminals; those who rescue civilians are the freedom fighters.

The international antiwar movement must be rebuilt without compromise demanding the immediate cessation of Syrian, Russian, & US coalition bombing of civilians & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.

(Photo from White Helmets)

This is a boy in Eastern Ghouta today where Syrian & Russian bombs “are falling like rain.” Thousands have been forced to live underground to escape shelling & an estimated 190 people have died since Sunday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syria & Russia are laying siege to a civilian population with bombers, helicopter gunships, missiles, & artillery.

The corrupted US antiwar movement led by “retired” CIA, FBI, & military officers claims the bombing of civilians is necessary to defend Assad’s “self-determination” & heralds the Syrian Army as freedom fighters. Syrian children weep at such monstrous betrayal of principles.

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

(Photo by Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

This little Afghan war refugee in Pakistan is who you think of when you read about the US sending more troops or dropping the Mother of All Bombs on Afghanistan. There is no other side to war, occupation, genocide.

(Photo by Muhammed Muheisen from 2014)

Considering the US-NATO war against Afghanistan when Islamophobia was first used in a major way to justify bombing civilians, it is absolutely odious to antiwar & Muslim feminists that feminist ideas were incorporated as fundamental to Islamophobia & that establishment feminists were marshaled to promote it. Any compromise on war debases feminism & threatens the liberation struggles of women. The whole scam is to justify war, occupation, persecution, genocide & at the same time discredit & destroy feminism. If you don’t get that, take up basket weaving & leave politics alone.

It isn’t just his smarminess that makes Justin Trudeau such an ideal target for ridicule. It’s that in effect he has the same politics as Trump, Modi, Duterte, Suu Kyi, Assad, & Putin & all the other bums but tries to pretend he’s the second coming of Jesus.

While in India, Justin Trudeau declared himself a feminist. Will someone please tell that puke that you cannot sell arms to Saudi Arabia which is bombing Yemen, support the bombing of Gaza & the apartheid state of Israel, or support the Rohingya genocide even in a backhanded way & call yourself a feminist? Are not Yemenis, Palestinians, Rohingya women too? Isn’t feminism a liberation ideology quite distinct from war criminality?

Photo is the pompous ass pontificating to students in India.

(Photo from ANI)

This unbearably gruesome photo is the bodies of Rohingya refugees laid out on a beach near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh on September 28, 2017. There were only 17 survivors on a boat carrying about 100 people which capsized trying to flee to Bangladesh. The photo is one of the six finalists for the 2017 World Press Photo of the Year award.

It is not possible to speak of forcible repatriation whilst Rohingya continue to cross into Bangladesh fleeing genocide in Arakan/Rakhine state. No decisions can be made about their futures without their direct participation. They are not pawns in some high-stakes geopolitical negotiation. They are a people in the crucibles of genocide.

There is increasing talk of turning Arakan state into an autonomous region so that Rohingya refugees can return safely. There are billions of dollars invested in ‘development’ projects in Arakan, particularly, but not only, the Chinese oil & gas pipelines from offshore wells directly to China. It is highly unlikely, if not absolutely excluded, that China, other countries, & Burma will agree to transfer those assets to the Rohingya people. You cannot have an autonomous territory unless you can control the infrastructures of the economy. But the most compelling reason autonomy is not advisable is that Burma has a high-tech military that will not respect autonomy while the Rohingya people have no military to defend them from genocide by war & other means, including nationalist Buddhist death squads within Arakan state. How would they defend themselves when China, Russia, Israel, India are arming Burma? Who would sell them arms? Would they be forced to become an unarmed military encampment to fend off death squads within Arakan & the Burmese army at the borders? Would autonomy mean they would be safe or that they would be just as unsafe as if they were forcibly deported to the killing fields they fled? That is for the Rohingya people to decide.

(Photo by Patrick Brown for UNICEF)

There’s a fellow from Canada who once argued on my wall that there are two sides to the occupation of Kashmir. Now he’s arguing there are two sides to the US occupation & bombing of Afghanistan. Stupid is international. There’s always somebody somewhere who won’t side unequivocally with the oppressed because it doesn’t pay that well & you’re not welcome in elite circles. Fox News will never ask for your opinion. The majority of humanity are a different kind of person & the heart & soul of social transformation.

Despite the weakness & corruption of the US antiwar movement, the majority of Americans have long opposed US wars, including in Afghanistan. We have to rebuild the antiwar movement in the US & internationally with that in mind. There is nothing more imperative. War, occupation, genocide are not just issues on a par with other demanding social issues but are preeminent. We can integrate all other social issues into protests in solidarity with those in the crucibles of war, occupation, genocide. Such are the highest traditions of antiwar protest around the world.

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