Kashmir stands with Palestinians: there were protests today, including confrontations with occupation forces, at Nowhatta in Srinigar against the massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza. There will be other protests today in Kashmir in solidarity with Palestinians. Palestinians & Kashmiris are kindred in occupation & resistance.
(Photo by Basit Zargar)
Let me just say that Facebook policy of covering difficult photos is about as reptilian as it gets. When Facebook colludes with Modi, Netanyahu, & other ruthless psychos to censor violent military occupations, it has no claims to sensitivity or squeamishness for crimes it tries to cover. It’s like mama trying to protect us from harsh reality but in truth it is repressive in a puerile way.
Portrait of Russian & Syrian ‘liberation’ of Eastern Ghouta by barrel bombs & chlorine: or as Assad’s corral of hired propagandists would put it, crisis actors forced to play dead & foam at the mouth on cue. As the corrupt antiwar & socialist movements would put it, this carnage of children is necessary to protect Assad’s right to national sovereignty against US regime-change. Meanwhile children die bereft in the public streets because somewhere in Syria, the principles of solidarity & opposition to war got bombed to smithereens when Stalinism allied with fascism.
The only principled demands are for the immediate cessation of bombing & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.
(Photo is from Eastern Ghouta in mid-March 2018. Photographer not identified but in several Arab publications.)
https://thekashmirpress.com/2018/05/17/deafening-silences-of-the-indian-intellectual-on-kashmir/
“In his seminal work The Indian Ideology, Perry Anderson tears apart the contradictions of India’s political system and argues that “Indian intellectuals might be unknowing participants in a grand hoax”.
That hoax Anderson alludes to, a graduate student at Harvard University Yahya Chaudhry argues, “is India’s secular democracy, which is eagerly marketed as the world’s largest and most diverse, but in reality, is soiled and riven by chauvinistic politics, religious parties, a calcified caste system, and the ongoing catastrophe of Kashmir”.”
B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, took out newspaper ads captioned “Sorry Commander, I cannot shoot” urging soldiers to refuse orders to shoot protesters in Gaza because it is illegal to shoot unarmed protesters. There is no report yet on whether any soldiers violated orders. But Israel may have chosen snipers from among their most psychotic & deranged soldiers as the US deploys special forces. It will be important to follow this to see if any Israeli soldiers found shooting unarmed protesters more genocide than they could swallow at one time.
Here women protesters are running for cover from tear gas fired by Israeli forces on May 11, 2018.
(Photo by Reuters)
The UN Special Rapporteur on the state of human rights in occupied Palestine says Israel’s actions against Palestinians amount to a war crime. The problem with that designation is that only one side of that “war” is armed. Although isn’t that the prevailing situation with all modern wars where civilians who bear the brunt of the violence are considered only “collateral damage”? The problem in Gaza is that when Israeli snipers gather at the buffer zone with two levels of apartheid fencing around Gaza & start shooting unarmed protesters, that is treating human beings like fish in a barrel. It’s a very strong statement from the Special Rapporteur & worth reading here in full: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180516-un-special-rapporteur-israels-actions-against-palestinians-amount-to-war-crime/
(Photo of snipers at the buffer zone from Human Rights Watch)
https://english.palinfo.com/news/2018/5/18/6-500-Palestinians-to-spend-Ramadan-behind-Israeli-bars
According to the Palestine Information Center, “6,500 Palestinians will spend the month of Ramadan in Israeli jails, including 350 children, 62 female prisoners, 8 of whom are minors, 500 administrative detainees, & 48 prisoners who have spent over 20 years in prison. They face systematic torture including unfair trials, abuse during detention & interrogation, medical negligence & arbitrary detention without charge or trial.”
Student protesters in Srinagar: where are their parents? Covering the other end of the street.
(Photo by Faisal Khan)
(Reposting from May 17, 2017)