Trump is tweeting up a storm against the Honduran refugee caravan, including a threat to cut off funds to Guatemala, Honduras & El Salvador because they aren’t shooting people trying to leave the country & join the caravan. The working people of those countries will now be torn between leaving & staying since if the US cuts funding there’ll be less reason to leave & a better chance to build humane societies without the US military holding up their repressive governments.
Daily Archives: October 23, 2018
Trump’s racism & white supremacism are so deep-seated & demented that the defiance of the Honduran caravan, now numbering over 3,000 refugees, is making him pop his cork. For a guy who’s unhinged to begin with, that could be life-threatening. This morning, the first thing on his mind–out of all the pressing problems in world politics–was that caravan which he denounced with a mile long of tweets & threats. How dare brown-skinned working people & little kids defy his bullying!? Pushing people around works on his minions so why not Hondurans?
Since he’s so full of venom but entirely bereft of coherence, most of his tweets aren’t worth quoting except his comment that “criminals & unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” among the marchers. That doesn’t mean very much since to him every brown-skinned person looks like every other brown-skinned person & they all look like “Middle Easterners” which to him means terrorists.
For human rights supporters around the world, the Honduran caravan is an inspiring & righteous expression of defiance against the barbarism of neoliberal immigration & refugee policies. The marchers show us the best of humanity, the determination of the oppressed not to be bullied or coerced by racists & we wish them godspeed on their journey.
The Indian occupying army claimed Firdousa, a young woman who was six-months pregnant, was killed in crossfire between militants with a grenade firing on an army base & the army defending itself. They didn’t explain how a single grenade could create crossfire. But now we know from testimony by this resident near the army base (who is the sister-in-law of Firdousa) that she was killed when “government forces started random firing on houses” in the area. This confirms what other residents said when they reported that such random firing is routine.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir. Go back, India, go back!
https://www.facebook.com/thekashmirwalla/videos/vb.122620111116010/186101758960322/?type=2&theater
Amnesty International is the first human rights group to protest Israel’s new zero tolerance policy against unarmed protesters at the apartheid barrier in Gaza. Between March 13th & September 24th, Israeli snipers killed 200 Palestinians & injured 18,000, some of them with permanent disabilities, simply for protesting against the blockade of Gaza & for the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Most sane minds would consider that a zero tolerance policy for Palestinian rights. But for Israeli politicians, it is not deadly enough & on Friday the Security Cabinet instructed the army to “gradually exacerbate its retaliatory actions” against unarmed Palestinians. This is a mandate for escalating genocide.
We must respond internationally to Israel’s provocation with rallies, forums, & protests of every kind. Too many Palestinians have died or been disabled for us to stand silent. The zero tolerance policy is a call to arms for those around the world who support Palestinian justice.
Kashmiris are grieving today over the bloodbath at Kulgam in south Kashmir which some are calling Bloody Sunday. So far, ten people, including a ten-year-old boy, have died & 43 were injured in an army hunt to kill operation. Please stand with them by reporting far & wide about the violence of the Indian military occupation, mostly directed at civilians, & about the Kashmiri struggle for independence.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir. Go back India, go back!
(Photo by Zafar Dar)
Murtaza Hassan Itoo on the occupation of Kashmir & the carnage in Kulgam:
“Occupation means that you can not trust the open sky. Occupation means that you can not trust the future. Occupation means that you live under the military rule. Occupation means you live under constant threat of a quick and sudden death. Occupation means everyday you die and the world watches in silence. Your silence is disturbing. Carnage in Kashmir. More than 8 killed and hundred injured in Kulgam. May every single one of you from collaborators to occupier involved in these war crime rot in hell!..”
These gruesome photos from the military operation at Kulgam show the extremes of violence that Kashmiris endure daily under military occupation. The injured are civilians, not armed combatants. Ten were killed, including seven civilians & a ten-year-old boy. Hiding this reality is why India so often snaps the internet in Kashmir & why social media is attempting to silence the voices of Kashmiri resistance.
(Photos via Aasif Shafi)
A humane & universal anthem of protest by Kashmiri Shafaq Muzafar:
Who are the people that voted? Who are those who wanted to be voted? Who are informers? Who are silent detectives? Who fires? Who enjoys this business? Whose job is to keep it going for a hundred more ages?
Who cares for the humans? Who wants a mechanical money money world?
May doomsday be near or they all behave as a greedless human with a heart and morals to make this world a okay type place to live in.
May all the ammunition and whatsoever harms life on earth perish or just evaporate.
May every human be able to breathe and die a natural death.
May the borders and the cold wars end.May these neo colonial strategies of the first world countries surrender and all the third world nations behave as they ought to with full economic and geographical independence.
Truly the novel surfacing taught me while I was growing up American is the biggest terrorist organisation.
Let’s learn to unlearn what is wants us to relearn. Let’s go back to our roots when we together fought against those white emotionless self praised Raj’s. Surely we didn’t fought for such a India or such a Pakistan..let’s stop sandwiching our Kashmir. Let’s care for the people on it and the land. After all is there anyone who will take the riches with him or her when he/ she dies?
Let’s surrender our ego and open our eyes to the injustices anywhere and everywhere. Let’s fight united against it unless justice is granted. Wake up my dear Indians join your hands with Kashmiris …help us rule our native land. Let all forces go back. Let achay din prevail everywhere! Other wise be ready to feel and witness The HORROR The HORROR.
According to the Saudi government, a goon squad of 15 Saudi agents accidentally strangled Khashoggi. Then they accidentally beheaded & dismembered him & accidentally lost his body parts. Those are the “facts” the Saudi regime & Pompeo “don’t want to talk about.”
With decades of personal membership in & political association with the Saudi ruling class, Khashoggi is too politically compromised to be immortalized as a champion of democracy or the oppressed. Most who live outside the Middle East don’t really know what he actually stood for in word & in deed. But his gruesome murder isn’t just about him as an individual. It involves the essential Saudi role in the US invasion of Iraq; the US & UK-backed Saudi-coalition carpet bombing of Yemen (now in its fourth year); US & Canadian military arms deals with Saudi Arabia; the Saudi role in thwarting the Arab Spring uprisings, including in Syria; the Saudi alliance with Israel & betrayal of the Palestinian struggle; the financial ties of the Saudi regime with Trump & Kushner; & last but not least, the increasing endangerment & repression of journalists around the world so that news reporting is violently controlled & embedded journalists spouting propaganda come to prominence. That’s how the Syrian Arab Spring uprising, Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingyas, & other freedom struggles could become portrayed as ‘Saudi-backed Wahhabi jihadist terrorism’.
May Jamal Khashoggi Rest in Peace. May we use his murder to protest all journalists arrested, tortured, disappeared, incarcerated, murdered–like those at the Great Return March in Gaza, those jailed & assaulted by the occupying army in Kashmir, the Rohingya citizen journalists in Arakan/Rakhine state disappeared by the military during the genocidal onslaught of 2017-2018, Burmese journalists Wa Lone & Kyaw Soe Oo arrested for reporting on the Rohingya genocide, those disappeared & murdered by the Assad regime. May they Rest in Peace & Power.
(Photo is screen shot of Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi ruler behind the assassination of Khashoggi, & Trump discussing its Saudi multi-million arms deal with the US.)
As of September 24th, 200 unarmed Palestinian protesters had been killed at the Great Return Marches & over 18,000 were injured, many permanently disabled. But the prevailing narrative is that Palestinians are terrorists spurning peace negotiations with Israel. International Palestinian solidarity has to counter such monumental lies without flagging.