It’s not that easy to get information on which companies are investing in Burma. The country is trying to modernize its economy from the military-capitalist model to an amalgam with neoliberal policies. Part of that is investing massively in tourism–kind of a Caribbean model writ large complete with golf courses & upscale shopping malls. This article, which cites Rohingya activist Ro Nay San Lwin, reveals that Starbucks, Coca Cola, Pepsi, & Krispy Kreme donuts are among those with or planning outlets in Burma to cash in on the neoliberal gold rush partly generated by genocide.

With the exception of Krispy Kreme, those other companies are on the Palestinian BDS list of companies to boycott. A boycott of them for apartheid in Israel would correspond strongly with a boycott of them for accommodation with genocide in Burma & mutually benefit both Palestinians & Rohingyas. We needn’t wait for a formal boycott call from Rohingya activists but can try to find out who else is making hay in Burma at the expense of the Rohingya people & begin boycotting them, complete with protest letters to their headquarters.

https://coconuts.co/yangon/news/starbucks-backtracks-myanmar-investment-deal/

Young Kashmiri farm workers shouting freedom slogans while they work:

https://www.facebook.com/kucheyrashid/posts/2241033362590892

Idlib, Syria: tens of thousands of Syrian civilians, protesters as far as the eye can see, are marching today against Syrian, Russian, & Iranian ground & aerial bombardment. Meanwhile, the antiwar movement is absolutely silent because it is corrupted by support for Assad & Putin & anti-Assadists are calling for US intervention despite US destruction in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Somalia. Such is the state of antiwar organization that those being bombed stand alone & have to come into the streets to demand ‘stop the bombing,’ & ‘stop the genocide.’

History will record the defeat of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising as one of the most monstrous crimes of our times when erstwhile socialists & antiwar activists marched lockstep with fascists, Islamophobes, & anti-Semites to defeat one of the most important antiwar struggles for democracy & human freedom. What has been destroyed must be rebuilt, both in Syria & the rest of the world. Fascism & dictatorship cannot be allowed to advance under the banner of Islamophobia. Any postmortems of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising must begin with condemnations of the corrupted antiwar movement which supports Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. The shame is immeasurable.

(Photo of Idlib from Asaad Hanna on Twitter)

This photo is Indian occupying soldiers in Kashmir dragging two, possibly more, dead young men through a village after gunning them down. As the Kashmiri who posted this on Twitter wrote: “This is a spectacle of necrophilic violence & absolute impunity to terrorise & dehumanise Kashmiris.” It’s also a human rights crime to desecrate the bodies of the dead. UN officials who are talking about human rights crimes in Kashmir should add this to the mountains of documentation they already have for Indian human rights crimes in Kashmir.

(Tweeted by shrimoyee)

Free Aasif Sultan, the Kashmiri journalist who remains in judicial custody for practicing journalism. The more international his defense, the greater protection for him & all Kashmiri journalists who have transformed our knowledge & understanding of the Kashmiri struggle.

(Meme from Free Aasif Sultan on Twitter)

There was some objection to posting the photo of Indian occupying soldiers dragging & desecrating the body of the Kashmiri man they had gunned down along with six others. It’s out of respect for the living & the dead that we avoid gruesome images. But many Kashmiris posted that photo because they are trying to educate the world about their struggle & want us to know the character of the occupation, not to indulge any morbid curiosity but to engage us in actively opposing such barbarity & standing with them. It would be good if we had a portrait photo of the young man who is being desecrated so we can remember him for the person & freedom fighter he was rather than only as a victim of the Indian army. But he gave his life for Kashmiri freedom & would not object to having the gruesome image used to build solidarity with that struggle. May he Rest in Peace.

Zahid Shah doing parkour which he learned from YouTube & teaches to kids in Kashmir: some awesome, crazy kids grow up to awesome, crazy adults.

https://www.facebook.com/kashmirparkour/posts/2250309538332210

Our awesome crazy kids:

https://www.facebook.com/humorsecretooficial/videos/276741869591319/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTQ5NTc3MjMzMjk2MzU/

Sorry for posting so damn much but the world is full of sorrows & there’s a lot to say about it all. We will not go gently into that dark night.

On August 24th, 2018, former US president Jimmy Carter wrote an opinion piece in the NY Times titled “In Syria an ugly peace is better than more war.” Carter plays the same kind of persona schtick as Pope Francis–a humble man of the people, when in fact they’re both savvy political operatives. More importantly, that isn’t how the people of Iran, El Salvador, the Philippines, the Palestinians or Egyptians remember Carter who presided over barbarous US interventions in those countries. Under his tenure, the US maintained close alliance with the Shah of Iran whose secret service called SAVAK excelled in violence, including the torture of small children in front of their parents. It was under Carter that the Camp David Accords were signed in September 1978 between Egyptian president Anwar Sadat & Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Those accords provided millions in US military equipment to the Egyptian military to use against the Egyptian people in exchange for selling Palestinians down the river. That is the ignominious political legacy of Jimmy Carter.

Latter day Carter has morphed into a champion of Palestinians while at the same time he actively campaigns against BDS. Again, he’s trying to play both sides of the street in a genocide. His schtick is to play the maverick, the president emeritus who grew a heart of gold. But as this opinion piece shows, his politics distinguish themselves very little from official US policy. That “ugly peace” he argues for is a call to return to the status quo of pre-Arab Spring uprising Syria where dictatorship prevailed, including with a SAVAK-like gulag. He makes no acknowledgement of the Arab Spring in Syria but identifies resistance to Assad with armed militias & al-Qaeda. He is essentially espousing US policy toward post-counterrevolution Syria. But what about accountability for the over 500,000 killed, including by being bombed to smithereens; the over 5 million refugees; the thousands disappeared, tortured, & murdered in Assad’s gulag? Are the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people of no consequence to Carter? Not one whit more than the aspirations of the Palestinian people are to Carter.

The greatest betrayal of our times are those of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising, identifying it with terrorism rather than a titanic struggle for democracy & freedom from dictatorship.

NY Times opinion piece by Carter: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers/in-syria-an-ugly-peace-is-better-than-more-war-1.2270522

Photo is displaced Syrian child in a camp in Idlib, now under Syrian, Russian, & Iranian ground & aerial bombardment.

(Photo by Nazeer Al-Khatib/AFP)