The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is a draconian Indian law that gives its army impunity for human rights crimes committed where it is deployed, including in Kashmir & against Indians who protest government policies. It isn’t unique to India since the US has forcibly negotiated similar agreements with Iraq & Afghanistan where US human rights & war crimes are not just routine but encouraged. That explains why so many soldiers return to civilian life with PTSD, mental health, addiction, & domestic violence issues, make up a huge percentage of prisoners & homeless, why veterans have a suicide rate of over 22 people a day & active duty soldiers a suicide rate over twice that of civilians. There are just beginning to be reports on the increasing number of soldier suicides among Indian troops in Kashmir. They still do not reveal the number of suicides or other problems among veterans. A similar situation is emerging among Israeli soldiers. Genocide against the Rohingya people in Burma will fully takes its revenge on Burmese society when soldiers return to civilian life & try to lead a normal life.

Most young people are not raised to engage in brutal criminality, including mass rape, violence against children, elderly, women, & unarmed civilians, or to engage in torture, & forcible disappearance. They are inculcated with racism in basic training to enable them to see people in occupied countries as beasts rather than fellow human beings. While they may follow orders when deployed, they break down & act out their psychological distress when they return to civilian life–& as the soldier suicide rate shows, even while deployed.

There is a long political tradition in many countries of reaching out to soldiers, especially veterans, to engage them in antiwar/anti-occupation activities & use their voices to expose & actively oppose war & occupation. Part of that is denouncing the AFSPA & similar security agreements armies use to grant impunity to unspeakable human rights crimes. Those under brutal occupation cannot be expected to reach out in fellowship to the perpetrators of violence but they are an essential component in building antiwar & anti-occupation movements.

The photo here is of an anti-AFSPA protest in India by Kashmiri & Indian students.

(Photo is from Abid Jeelani)

The UN was forced to withdraw from Eastern Ghouta this week before releasing humanitarian aid because of heavy Russian bombing. Or as fascists Vanessa Beeley & Eva Bartlett would say, because they only found dolls when they arrived. That would explain why Syria stripped 70% of the medical supplies from UN aid convoys, including trauma & surgical kits, insulin & other vital supplies.

There are so many “socialists” who haven’t uttered a peep about the bombing of civilians in Syria. Or for that matter in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Yemen? Then you get the Stalinist & crazy ones singing hosannas for Assad & Syrian & Russian bombing, hailing them as freedom fighters & marching with fascists, Islamophobes, anti-Semites. Think there might be an existential crisis? A terminal disease? A complete collapse of the old political paradigms? A time for people to skulk away quietly & rot in private?

Perhaps an amoral Assad supporter could explain to this child in Eastern Ghouta the political superiority of Syrian & Russian bombing that has forced hundreds to live in filthy underground basements for the past few weeks so they don’t get bombed to death. It probably wouldn’t take much to persuade her that Assad’s national sovereignty makes all this necessary & the politically right thing to do. Especially if you throw a few Stalin quotes her way.

Or is she an actor, a terrorist, a human shield for terrorists, or as fascist Vanessa Beeley claims, a doll?

Demand the immediate cessation of Syrian & Russian bombing of Eastern Ghouta & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.

(Photo by Amer Almohibany)

Children in a field hospital in Eastern Ghouta: actors, terrorists, human shields for terrorists, or dolls as Assad propagandists claim? Or victims of Russian & Syrian bombing of civilians?

Stand with the Syrian people & demand the immediate cessation of Syrian, Russian, & US coalition bombing of civilians & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.

(Photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP)

Please sign this petition demanding justice for Asifa Bano:

https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-asifa-8yr-old-girl-raped-and-murdered-in-kathua-j-k?

“Any human’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

― John Donne, Meditation XVII

(I have taken the liberty of changing man to human as Donne would have were he writing today.)

See how Indian democracy works in Kashmir?

For those who would prefer me more temperate in my criticisms of Assad propagandists & their fellow travelers, rightwing nationalists, Islamophobes, anti-Semites, & other such dirtballs, diplomacy is not my schtick. In my political life, from trade unions to the social movements, my observation is that those who insist on diplomatic temperance are equivocators & dissemblers. I speak as one of the oppressed, not as a movement diplomat. That’s just the way it is.

This is a merciless, brilliant excoriation of British journalist Robert Fisk who traveled in Syria the same way as fascist propagandists Bartlett & Beeley–embedded up the ass of the Syrian army. Fisk once criticized journalists who embedded with the US army in Iraq so he knew exactly what he was doing & how compromised that made his journalism on Syria. His corruption as a journalist became overt & boldfaced during the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, & elsewhere where his contemptuous attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims were expressed in neon. Because he’s such a lowbrow racist & Islamophobe, he was incapable of seeing the monumental power & importance of those uprisings, including in Syria where he openly sided with the Assad regime against the revolution for democracy. He is no longer a reputable journalist but an apologist for dictatorship in the Arab world. Color him decayed.

https://pulsemedia.org/2016/12/03/robert-fisks-crimes-against-journalism/