The barbaric use of pellet guns against Kashmiri protesters has been somewhat overshadowed by the Indian army’s constant murderous hunt to kill operations & the razing to the ground of family homes within the cordons of the operations. It is not an issue we can allow to shade out of public awareness if for no other reason than enlightened self-interest. If we don’t join Kashmiris in the demand to ban their use in Kashmir, we will be battling them on the streets of London, Tokyo, Berlin, & elsewhere.

This post from May 2nd of this year is by Peer Viqar Ul Aslam who pointed out that pellet munitions are a deliberate attempt to disable Kashmiri youth to deter others from taking part in the struggle against occupation. Not unlike how Israeli snipers shoot Palestinian protesters in the legs or kill them outright. Disability rights has become central to the struggles against occupation & for self-determination.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo by Saqib Majeed)

An extreme rightwing fascistic guy named Jair Bolsonaro just won the Brazil elections for president. When protests begin against him, we predict a Max Blumenthal interview claiming they’re regime-change protesters bankrolled by the US rather than working people protesting Brazil’s rapacious neoliberal economic programs. That’s our boy’s schtick: shilling for dictators & tyrants. As the son of Sydney Blumenthal, the rotten apple doesn’t fall from the rotten tree.

In 2012-13, during Dilma Rousseff’s tenure as president, there were protests all over the country numbering in the millions against Brazil’s neoliberal projects. Those (ongoing) projects included massive dispossession of indigenous tribes, hydroelectric & strip mining projects, agribusiness projects, environmental devastation, building sports stadia for the World Cup & Olympic games rather than affordable housing for the millions of homeless & slum dwellers. Brazilian Stalinists began circulating claims that the protesters were fascists organized by the rightwing to bring down the Rousseff regime. That slander went viral on social media & undercut international support for the protests. It can be said without exaggeration that through their slanderous campaign those Stalinist political forces–the same ones shilling for the Assad & Putin regimes–helped set the stage for this election. It should also be said that the election does not represent the majority voices of the Brazilian people since the elections are probably just as rigged as the 2016 & upcoming 2018 US elections. The majority of eligible voters probably were denied the right to vote (as Blacks & Native Americans in the US) or didn’t bother to vote.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-tropical-trump-who-hankers-for-days-of-dictatorship?CMP=fb_gu&fbclid=IwAR32C4qu64fwj0Rw_eJSnfkFP0tUgZdKhKzeiFs1gkeIMFSABTV3N6l1I_c

The Israeli army killed three Palestinian children in an airstrike over Gaza last night. Between March 30 & September 24th, Israeli snipers killed 200 & injured 18,000 in Gaza, leaving many with permanent disabilities. So when Netanyahu says he’s “heartbroken & appalled” at the murderous attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue, we say he has no right to dishonor the memories of the eleven so monstrously killed. May they Rest In Peace.

(Photo is three Palestinian children killed by Israeli snipers or bombers from Shehab News)

There have been several recent articles faulting the MeToo movement for having “lost its way” in a name & shame game for celebrity women–or as Tarana Burke (the woman credited with initiating the movement) says, the current MeToo movement’s “unwavering obsession with the perpetrators—a cyclical circus of accusations, culpability, & indiscretions.” No one owns the MeToo movement, nor can anyone, including Burke, control how the movement develops or how it is coopted by media & the power elite. What is called the MeToo movement only emerged in October 2017. Since then, hundreds of thousands of women have been emboldened to come forward & publicly admit that at sometime in their lives, including as small children, they were subjected to sexual harassment, humiliation, assault–not only by strangers but by brothers, fathers, uncles, neighbors, priests, doctors, teachers, & others in a dominant power relationship to them. The movement hasn’t been around long enough to lose its way since millions of women & children are still afraid to speak their truth about the devastation of sexual violence in their lives.

It is not the fault of MeToo testifiers that the movement has been coopted to only focus on celebrity women. Nor is that the fault of celebrity women who show immense courage in coming out & naming their prominent attackers. When the women’s movement emerged in the 1960s & 1970s, first it was maligned & ridiculed as only lesbians or women too ugly to get a man. But when vilifying feminists didn’t work, the powers-that-be chose to co-opt the movement for elite women so as to alienate working women & make them believe it had nothing to do with them. The slanders of that media campaign live with us today in the constant misrepresentations & lies about Second Wave feminism. Cooptation is a means to destroy the development of women’s rights as an inclusive social movement.

MeToo is not a social movement as that term is usually employed. There are no organizations, no decision-making conferences, no international collaboration to debate a course of action or to formulate demands. There is nothing more imperative than the organizational formation of a women’s movement although the 2017 & 2018 Women’s March showed the immense potential for such a development. Because of the ad hoc character of Me Too, the MeToo testifiers cannot be faulted for not raising a comprehensive program against racism, colonialism, war, occupation, genocide, capitalism, inequality. MeToo represents only a current, & in very inchoate & amorphous form, within the struggle against women’s oppression. It has hardly exhausted its potential when the sexual crimes against children, including trafficking, & rape as a weapon of war & genocide have not even begun to be addressed.

What is needed is a women’s movement with international forums, decision-making conferences, organizational forms to promote unity in the struggle for all of women’s rights & that will, of necessity, incorporate & campaign against the use of sexual violence in war, occupation, genocide (like Kunan & Poshpora in Kashmir & the Rohingya genocide), children’s rights & welfare, racism, eugenics, reproductive rights, colonialism. In that regard, it is of considerable concern that the Women’s Marches which numbered over three-million women on every continent were ridiculed & scorned as “pussy parades” rather than heralded as the beginnings of such a movement.

Is the MeToo movement lost in a vicious circle of name & shame, only seeking revenge on perpetrators? That is not the fault of MeToo testifiers who lived & suffered silently with the trauma of sexual assault because women lack legal protections & when there is no possible justice in the courts because of statute of limitation laws protecting perpetrators. Out of the over 70 women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, only one met the legal standards for litigation. If there is no justice through the courts, why should women be faulted for wanting some form of revenge or informal justice? Revenge through the courts is anyway nine-tenths of the law.

It must be emphasized–for those who find fault with every damn thing women do to redress the injustices & violence against them–that children are the victims of these sexual crimes just as much as grown women. If these critics cannot find it in their hearts to support women in their struggle against sexual predators, perhaps they can be persuaded to support children. MeToo has not lost its way even though it is being coopted. It is our commitment to broaden its scope to include all women & children.

This is a superb statement by Kashmiri feminists & male supporters on the relationship between the MeToo movement & the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination. They aren’t addressing a new problem nor certainly a problem unique to Kashmir since sexual harassment & even assault have long been issues in several progressive social movements, including Black liberation, the antiwar, & socialist movements. The statement also brilliantly ties the MeToo movement among Indian women to the struggle against the use of sexual violence by Indian occupying forces in Kashmir when it says:

“…we would like to draw the attention of Indian women in the #MeToo wave to the circumstances faced by Kashmiri women, who have had cause for years to say “Me Too” in the face of an overwhelming threat & reality of sexual assault & violence by Indian forces. The widespread denial across India of the mass rapes in Kunan & Poshpora must be seen as one manifestation of the refusal to believe survivors. If the movement is to truly stand up for women, everywhere, then supporters of #MeToo must move beyond communitarian & nationalistic affiliations to fight against all perpetrators, including agents of the state & realize the truth of occupation in Kashmir.”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wjEW401Vo4LZJ4dK1SPmQbJEAoJDEVbZYDdPCWyTELg/edit?ts=5bb9216e&fbclid=IwAR0Lfs2MzN1Ei90ZAL0WhJWyZAhUQ0cONDINeZ0V-dFWMpKb1yk18rP-h3A

This is Maung Zarni on the issue of Rohingya statelessness. It’s just a brief but very cogent comment on the issue. This was a panel in London in June 2012 during the height of a military onslaught against the Rohingya in Burma when Suu Kyi went to pick up her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize & a truckload of other humanitarian awards, including in the US. She’s sitting right next to him & regrettably we don’t get to hear any response she made. But even then, in other interviews, she was exposing her views toward the Rohingya people as less than humanitarian.

Not to put pressure, but we hope Maung & Ro Nay San Lwin will consider posting their speeches more frequently because they’re so educational & valuable.

https://www.transcend.org/…/dr-maung-zarni-on-the-question…/?

(Photo is screenshot of Maung from video presentation on statelessness included in the linked article)

It’s not because I think I’m a hotshot that I created the Facebook wall Mary Scully Reports. I’m always waiting for the axe to come down so I’m pulling a Hail Mary Pass of some kind. I’m in too deep to even dream of fame & fortune as a rebel. I chose a Kashmiri stone pelter as my cover photo because I make no secret of my admiration for those who stand unarmed as civilian defense guards against sophisticated armies. Maybe it means I’ve never risen above adolescent rebellion but they’re my heroes. We can only wish to emulate their courage.

https://www.facebook.com/Labor.and.International.News/

This 1967 essay, originally published in France, was written by Maxime Rodinson, a French socialist historian whose parents were 19th century refugees from pogroms against Jews in the Russian empire. The excellent introduction to this American edition is written by Peter Buch, an American Jew & anti-Zionist who played an important role in my education about the Palestinian struggle–as did Rodinson’s essay. Rodinson’s analysis is incisive & brilliant but above all is a historically scientific analysis of Zionist colonialism within the framework of European & American colonialism. If Zionism is not understood in class, social, & political terms, anti-Zionism can lose its bearings & compromise–or at least appear to compromise–with hatred of Jews, which is not tolerable. That is not to blunt our fury or opposition to Israeli apartheid & genocide against Palestinians but to understand the underpinnings of Zionist ideology that it may be decisively defeated along with every vestige of European & American colonialism.

https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/maxime-rodinson-israel-a-colonial-settler-state.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3PbdRUnTi5gUQik-v6GlOEjfhB5SO6k_YlI1GzVhilX8hwsNZC2W2G-_k

Media reports claim 40 Kashmiri policeman were killed by “rebels” across Kashmir. Is it possible they were killed in that ubiquitous ‘crossfire’ that’s killing all the unarmed civilians?

This photo of Ghulam Jeelani was taken by Ahmer Khan at the September 27th funeral of 26-year-old Kashmiri Saleem Malik, a civilian working man gunned down by Indian occupying forces in what they call “crossfire.” “Crossfire” is the Indian term for what the US Pentagon calls “collateral damage.” Both are euphemisms to disguise the direct targeting of civilians in war & occupation.

The photo went viral on the assumption that the grieving man was young Saleem’s father but Ghulam was in fact a neighbor of Saleem. He loved Saleem for his kindness, especially to Ghulam’s young autistic son. This article about the photo & about Saleem includes a video of Ghulam describing Saleem & why he loved him. It’s a wonderful tribute to a remarkable young man. May Saleem Rest In Peace.

https://www.thequint.com/videos/news-videos/that-viral-photo-why-did-an-unknown-man-cry-at-saleems-funeral?f

Photo of Saleem Malik. May he Rest In Peace.