Indian media is at a fever pitch denouncing the ‘miscreants’ who stoned a school bus in the Shopian district of Kashmir & seriously injured two students. Going over the top with melodramatic music blasting in the background, one hyperventilating Indian TV reporter called it a “crime against humanity.” Omar Abdullah, the criminal thug who as Indian Chief Minister of the state authorized the use of pellet guns against unarmed protesters, called the stone pelters ‘goons.’ Let’s take their nationalist fulminations down a notch. They haven’t yet identified who the ‘miscreants’ were–whether they were criminal hooligans, teenagers in a prank gone very wrong, or possibly incited by agents provocateurs. It is deeply regrettable that two kids were injured & nothing at all to be made light of. But if we’re going to talk crimes against humanity, what about the hunt to kill operation the Indian army conducted today in the Shopian district where they shot & killed a 12-year-old boy? Now that is a crime against humanity & a constant feature of the occupation of Kashmir. But where’s the melodrama & denunciations on Indian news? The stone pelters gathered at the hunt to kill operation to obstruct more crimes against humanity were highly unlikely to be the same kind of kids as those who attacked the school bus. Those who throw rocks at school buses are an antisocial element or are just dumb kids; stone pelters at hunt to kill operations function as civilian defense guards. As Kaiser Majeed said: “The Shopian school bus incident is reprehensible. But do child-killers have a right to talk about it? Meanwhile, they shot a 12-year-old child in the chest in the same district.”

India will use the school bus incident to justify more arrests & more administrative detainments of stone pelters & other youth & to incite condemnation against them. We can fully solidify with the kids who were injured without joining the chorus associating political stone pelters with delinquents or trying to make stone pelting a criminal act as Israel has done. It is the way unarmed protesters defend themselves & deflect occupying armies using high-tech, sophisticated military equipment. To condemn them is to condemn Intifada.

This photo is the 12-year-old boy shot & killed today by Indian occupation forces. That is a crime against humanity. May he Rest In Peace.

(Photo from several sources)

We must talk….
Between the fight of wind and fire.
Between the sunrise and sunset.
Between the thunder storm and rain showers.
Between the anguish and pleasure.
Between the boundaries.
We must talk!
Before falling down.
Before the end of life.
Before getting drenched into evil.
Before becoming violent.
Before hugging the distances, fear.
Before defiling the earth.
Before making religion a roadblock.
We must talk!
Up in the air.
Up in the skies.
In an Open field covering with pine trees.
Up in the dark clouds.
Up in the another planet.
We must talk!
To be unique.
To be humble.
To spread humanity.
To spread love, kindness, knowledge.
To solve disputes.
We must talk!
In order to get back our greeny days.
To gain back essence of roses.
To rise again.
For touching the sky.
And we must talk!
Oh, yes…….by love. Up in the air with a cold breeze moving silently, under the moonlit.
We must talk!
We must talk!

–by Shahid Imran via Rollie Mukherjee

Someone has asked me what the term “guppy” means since in the dictionary it means a tropical fish, which doesn’t fit how I use it to describe obsequious, unquestioning followers. It may be a Minnesota-ism or it could be particular to the Scully tribe. It might even derive from someone who knows the political habits of the fish. I don’t know. I only know I grew up with it as a term to describe those who follow the leader without asking why. When said properly, it is spit out & not so much uttered. It is never a term of respect.

It’s so powerful that Rohingya activists met the UNSC delegation with a protest & handed them a charter of demands for repatriation to Burma. Because it’s so grotesque that a delegation–which included representatives from China & Russia who arm the genocide & 13 other countries that didn’t utter more than a peep of protest or did nothing to stop it & are doing nothing to aid refugees–flew in from UN headquarters in NYC to act like superheroes. At heart, it is a colonial, white supremacist scenario, turning the Rohingya into hapless victims & the west into white knights. It’s contemptible.

(Photo from Al Jazeera)

The Committee to Protect Journalists is doing extremely important work, especially in an era of fake news when propaganda blogs & state-owned Russian & Syrian media are considered alternative media & a whole cult is built against reading mainstream media beholden to other governments, as though post-truth truthiness were contagious. The wise political person learns how to read media, with all its faults; the guppy follows the propagandist.

Some halfwits are saying Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for preventing another Korean War. Those with all their faculties wonder how the halfwits are respected as political commentary rather than ridiculed as farce. But after Kissinger & Suu Kyi, why not?

#BringInTheClowns

The UN Security Council (UNSC) delegation to Burma & Bangladesh, with a brief photo op foray into Rohingya refugee camps, proved to be an absolute disgrace. No one with half a brain would have expected much because at the height of the current genocidal assault the UNSC issued only one statement on the Rohingya genocide. Their November 2017 statement began with a condemnation of ARSA (irregular forces who were the only defense unarmed Rohingya had against military & nationalist death squads) & expressed “grave concern” over human rights abuses in Arakan/Rakhine state, “including by the Myanmar security forces” (they did not mention nationalist death squads armed by the military). The statement went downhill from there. Rather than calling out the apartheid system imposed on the Rohingya people or condemning the Burmese genocidaires, the statement suggested the conflict was communal conflict between Buddhists & Muslims (the communal conflict narrative masks the power relations between nationalist death squads armed by & operating with the military). They ended the shameful document by promoting the repatriation agreement signed between Burma & Bangladesh in October 2017 at the height of the genocidal onslaught.

The usual explanation for the refusal of the UNSC to act by imposing an arms embargo & other sanctions on Burma was that China & Russia, who both arm the genocide & have vested economic interests in Burma, would use their veto powers. But this delegation showed that the corruption of the UNSC is integral to the organization because UNSC member nations are on the side of the genocidaires, not the Rohingya people. This genocide has been going on for several years, has been well documented by these governments since 1988 & in media for the past six years. The UNSC knows damn well what is going on in Arakan state. The only reason for this so-called fact-finding trip is to slap some life back into the moribund repatriation agreement which would forcibly repatriate Rohingya refugees back to Burma. It’s big power politics that will not recognize the Rohingya people have a human & democratic right to make all decisions about their fate & about if, when, & under what conditions they will return to Burma. To sanction those perpetrating genocide to control Rohingya fate is a political abomination.

The coup de grâce of this delegation was that when visiting Burma, Irrawaddy news, a pro-genocide Burmese news source, reported that UNSC officials avoided calling the Rohingya people by their proper name & only referred to them as refugees so as not to offend the genocidaires. This goes way beyond shameful to complicity. Even the pope couldn’t get away with that kind of crap. Asked about the role of China & Russia on the UNSC, representatives defended them, ignoring the fact known to the whole world that Russia & China arm the genocide. They completed their dog & pony show by calling for an investigation of human rights abuses–being careful not to use the terms ethnic cleansing, apartheid, or genocide–& proposed that the Burmese genocidaires do the investigation. How despicable can you get?

It is the Rohingya people alone who have the right to determine their fate & they have laid out the conditions for their return to Burma. We cannot allow the UN to silence their voices & allow the genocidaires to speak for them.

Photo is Karen Pierce, the UK representative on the UNSC delegation doing her compassion schtick, using a 12-year-old Rohingya refugee girl in Cox’s Bazar as a prop. It was compassionate Pierce who dared not utter the name Rohingya & later spoke for Burma investigating its own genocide.

(Photo by Michelle Nichols/Reuters)

Amnesty has given their Ambassador of Conscience award, their highest award, to Colin Kaepernick for his resolute stand against racism. Even if you’re not much for honorifics unless they serve justice, most people are delighted for Kaepernick because he jeopardized a multi-million dollar career. Such commitment is seldom seen. Though most people who put their lives on the line or who have given their lives for freedom don’t receive any such honors.

Micheal Clinton, an Irish human rights activist & a representative to the European Rohingya Council, now calls on Amnesty to revoke their 2009 Ambassador of Conscience award to Aung San Suu Kyi presented to her by Bono in Dublin in 2012 when she was traveling around the world to pick up a warehouse of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, in the midst of a genocidal siege against the Rohingya people. As long as Amnesty doesn’t pull the honorific from Suu Kyi, it’s as discredited as the Nobel Peace Prize for war criminals. Colin Kaepernick, but mostly the Rohingya people, don’t deserve that.

Michael Clinton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dancewithwovels/status/991304439528153088

(Photo is screenshot of Kaepernick from Amnesty video of award ceremony)

Quite a powerful photo of a young boy attending the April 25th funeral of Ishfaq Ahmad, one of the four rebels killed in a hunt to kill operation in south Kashmir. Children are so sensitive to the tensions around them that indignation at occupation must permeate their entire lives. From thus is resistance born.

(Photo by Faisal Khan)

“The presence of even a single poor child on the street means a million defeats for mankind.”

–Basit Zargar