Tell us the difference between Zionist propagandists who blame “Hamas terrorist oppression” for Israel shooting down unarmed protesters as ‘human sacrifice for photo ops’ & ‘martyrdom performance’ & Assad propagandists who blame head-chopping jihadists for forcing kidnapped children into playing dead & foaming at the mouth on cue.

Yarmouk apocalypse: this is Palestine Hospital in Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp before & after Syrian & Russian bombers “liberated” the camp from ISIS. The Assadist song & dance explaining its violation of international law in bombing medical facilities is that ISIS fighters hole up in hospitals. We’ve heard that before when Israel bombed Gaza for seven straight weeks in 2014.

(Photo from Qalaat Al Mudiq on Twitter)

85-year-old Dhabiyah Abu Rashid was displaced from Haifa, Palestine by Zionist militias in the 1948 Naqba. She was killed by Syrian regime shelling of Yarmouk refugee camp on Friday. She was one of the elderly Palestinians unable to flee Syrian & Russian aerial & artillery bombardment. May she Rest In Peace.

(Photo of Dhabiyah Abu Rashid & information from Mataar Ismaeel on Twitter)

Apocalyptic Yarmouk: after several weeks of sustained bombing & artillery fire ostensibly to rout ISIS, the Syrian army has taken over Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp about five miles from the center of Damascus. Part of the takeover involved bussing ISIS fighters out of the camp into the “Syrian desert,” wherever that is. Yarmouk is now indistinguishable from Raqqa after US carpet bombing to “liberate” the city from ISIS.

Palestinians in Syria are descendants of those displaced in the 1948 creation of the state of Israel & in later Israeli wars of displacement. Before 2011, there were 14 Palestinian refugee camps in Syria; Yarmouk was the largest. When the Syrian Arab Spring began that year, Palestinians in Syria were divided, partially between the youth in the camps & the older leadership of political groups like Hamas, & partially because of their vulnerable position in Syria as refugees. The political organizations tried to maintain an untenable neutral position on the conflict between the regime & the revolution but it was impossible since it directly impacted the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Taking a neutral position rather than siding with the regime angered the Assad regime which portrayed itself as a champion of Palestinians. Hamas, despite support from Iran & Hezbollah (both key allies of Assad), broke its alliance with Assad & sided with the Syrian uprising. Most of its leadership hightailed it out of Syria & those who remained were executed under suspicious circumstances. Other groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) sided with the regime & functioned in the refugee camps as auxiliary to the Syrian army by carrying out raids, patrolling the streets with machine guns, arresting supporters of the revolution & handing them over to Assad intelligence to deposit in the notorious gulag. The political situation in Yarmouk was already tense when in July 2012 Assad forces fired on protesters in Yarmouk & killed ten protesters. When thousands came out for the funeral services of those killed, the regime tried to nip resistance in the bud by launching its first of many military operations against the camp.

Before 2012, there were 160,000 Palestinians living in Yarmouk plus about 100,000 Syrians in the vicinity. When ISIS captured all of Yarmouk in 2015, the regime claimed ISIS could not have done so without the help of Hamas inside Yarmouk & also accused Hamas of funneling weapons to armed opposition groups. There were only 18,000 Palestinians still living there in 2015 because of the deterioration of conditions, ISIS violence, & regime & Russian barrel bombing. One year later, there were between 7,000 & 8,000 Palestinians still living there—mostly elderly residents unable to leave. Several weeks ago, Syrian & Russian forces launched a full-scale aerial & artillery campaign on Yarmouk to rout ISIS. It became the scene of the heaviest fighting in Syria since Eastern Ghouta was taken by the regime. Airstrikes leveled over 60-percent of the camp so that the few hundred elderly civilians remaining are in uninhabitable conditions.

The Assad regime & its apologists on the one hand blame Hamas & on the other herald this as a victory of the Syrian army over ISIS, a “Zionist proxy.” Doesn’t really make sense nor does it explain the widespread looting by the Syrian army going on right now. What the regime was really routing in Yarmouk was not just ISIS but those thousands of Palestinians not fooled by regime rhetoric about being the best defender of Palestinians in the Middle East.

(Photo of post-apocalyptic Yarmouk from Arabic sources on Twitter; photographer not identified)

Last Saturday in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, nine-year-old Rizwan Ahmad Kaboo was hit in the head by a rubber bullet when Indian paramilitary troops opened fire on young protesters pelting their armored vehicle with stones. Young Rizwan is in hospital requiring specialized treatment for a serious head wound. There is no report on whether he was among the protesters or if he was playing or standing near the incident.

The Indian army will be holding funeral services for the armored vehicle even though it suffered no serious injuries. Armored vehicles, made of galvanized & stainless steel, are manufactured to withstand the impact of shrapnel, bullets, missiles, shells.

Hopefully this small boy will recover from his injury without brain damage or severe emotional distress.

(Photo of Rizwan Ahmad Kaboo from QNS 24×7 News)

My little flock of cockatiels have been quite unhappy for a while since captivity bores them silly. I try to thwart their biological imperatives because I don’t approve of breeding birds for captivity. They were meant by nature to fly free. But they’ve been so discontent for the past several months that when I discovered the ménage à trois had gone through the silverware drawer to the cabinet below to build a nest, I decided not to interfere so they would be occupied in doing what birds do & wouldn’t be so miserable. Now the landlady is coming to fix the mold problem in the cabinet next to where they are & they must be moved to prevent them from getting sick. This solves my problem of preventing babies but it’s very stressful for them. After nearly 25 years of rescuing birds (usually let go by their caretakers), I have become opposed to the abuse of birds as pets. It violates their nature & ties them to humans when they were meant to be free in the companionship of each other.

Running interference for the bonehead in the White House, experts on the morning news were asked to ‘give the context’ for Trump’s claim that undocumented immigrants (economic refugees) are ‘animals’. Why can’t they just say he’s a racist dirtball?

The same network interviewed Thomas Friedman from the NY Times, a more unscrupulous Zionist & political halfwit most of us have never seen outside the Knesset or the White House. Offended that Palestinians don’t like living in an open air penitentiary, he said Hamas should stop forcing Palestinians to ‘throw themselves up against the fence.’

Support refugee & immigrant rights. Build BDS.

Any reports or comments on Modi’s visit? There was once an interesting discussion among Kashmiris on my wall about India pirating hydroelectric power from Kashmir. It would be valuable to hear some insights on what that means for Kashmiris.

My word has made the big time with Rehana Khan Parker’s meme. Next step the dictionary.

Left the news off all day hoping to avoid both Trump-dumb-as-a-stump & the “royal” wedding. But that damn wedding was everywhere on evening news. Love is grand & it was swell they quoted Martin Luther King but nothing about it will make me think of feudalism as anything but a stinking rotten institution that believes some people are superior to others. Me? I wouldn’t consider marrying into it, even for love, especially the British moochocracy which is steeped in racism & colonialism. If you’re committed to human equality, all that pomp & bullshit is nothing but offensive.