Iraqis under US military occupation for over 15 years stand in solidarity with Kashmiris under Indian military occupation for nearly three decades.
https://www.facebook.com/muhammad.ashfaqqammar.7/posts/10215611963763412
US out of Iraq! India out of Kashmir!
Since the Pittsburgh gunman was a Christian, where are the all the demands that Christians around the world denounce & disassociate from his actions? Or is such a spectacle of contrition only operative when the gunman is a Muslim?
But of course Netanyahu congratulated Bolsonaro. They’re made of the same stuff politically. What’s important to evaluate is why extremist right wingers are winning elections around the world (is the electorate moving right or are most elections as rigged as they are in the US?) & what that represents. The only effective countervailing power against this rightward shift—whatever it represents—is independent, massive political action against war, occupation, genocide, inequality & for human & democratic rights.
Where are the candlelight vigils, where is the mourning for these Palestinian children? Are they not human too?
(Photo is three Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombers October 29th 2018)
As the Rohingya people fight forced deportation back to the killing fields of Arakan state, it becomes more important to follow the Rohingya movement for understanding how they see things & what we can do to support them.
Genocide against the Rohingya people remains at the center of world politics. Forcing them back without provisions for their safety is sending them back to concentration camps & allows the Burmese genocidaires to complete the ‘final solution’. Solidarity in every form, including rallies, speaking tours, social media campaigns, is an absolute imperative. It isn’t enough to strip Suu Kyi of her honorifics; she & the generals must be stripped of their power to harm a hair on the head of a single Rohingya man, woman or child.
(Meme by Imran Mohammed, Rohingya activist)
Trump is considering an executive order that would end citizenship for those born to non-citizens in the US. Since my father was an undocumented worker all his life, that would make me & all my pro-Trump, anti- immigration siblings what they call “illegal aliens.” Ain’t karma a bitch?
News reports that Trump may be sending as many as 5,000 troops to the border on top of the 2,500 National Guard already there. Since the Honduras/Guatemala caravan is traveling by foot & still over 1,000 miles away, those soldiers will be facing off in some way with young women & small children who reportedly make up the majority of people now crossing in large numbers. And still that’s not as horrific as the EU whose policies have led to the drowning of over 25,000 African refugees in the Mediterranean or forcing thousands of war refugees trying to enter Europe to live in concentration camps or in the rough during record cold winters. We have to reclaim our humanity & cannot merely stand aghast whilst our governments treat other human beings like trash. No human being is alien to us.
Not to take away from the tragedy in Pittsburgh, but it is a remarkable & altogether disturbing dissonance that the lives of white people in the US, Paris, London, Amsterdam are mourned around the world while there is complete silence about or only episodic attention to the millions lost through war, occupation, & genocide in Palestine, Kashmir, Burma, the Philippines, China, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Aren’t they human beings too? Aren’t their lives as precious & their survivors as bereft?
There’s so much tragedy in the world that it’s been awhile since I’ve posted about our girl Betty Windsor though she’s been a regular whirlwind of weddings, funerals, & the usual trifectas at the horse track. I even had to forego assessing her annual Christmas address which is always a masterpiece of banalities & non sequiturs. As busy as she is, life is pretty much the same for Betty–as it has been for every worthless moochocrat for the past over one-thousand years: hitting the horse track with Camilla, waving at parades while maintaining that poker face like she has a pole stuck up her butt, & trying to keep Phil, her “anus horribilis,” alive. In lieu of an update, I repost this, knowing that every word of it is still true.
Today, after 63 years on the throne, Betty Windsor becomes the longest-reigning monarch in English history. She chose to celebrate in a low-key way because the Diamond Jubilee extravaganza in 2012 required the closing of so many schools & hospitals she feared a similar event would cause a popular revolution & spell the end of moochocracy. She also had a trifecta riding on some horses today so she had to put first things first.
English media reports that Betty is Britain’s most popular monarch though how they would know that is a mystery. More popular than Henry VIII or Richard III? A lot of them were criminally insane & mass murderers so the honorific may not mean much. Perhaps it’s because monarchs are no longer allowed to cut people’s heads off in a snit.
Betty has seen a dozen prime ministers come & go–one more worthless than the next–& she got along well with all of them as long as they kept cutting the welfare checks.
Despite a life of indolence married for 70 years to her “anus horribilis,” Betty knows fluent French–though not as fluently as she knows a racing form. Horses are her passion, which probably explains her choice of husband. Over the years she’s received many gifts of exotic animals like jaguars, black beavers, & sloths. It was the latter she shared most affinity with. They were so much like her children.
Her life has been an emotional roller-coaster–from finding out her kids were as worthless as her husband & reckless, even flamboyant in their indiscretions, to grief when her royal yacht Britannia was scrapped in 1997.
She is notoriously cheap & this manifested first at her coronation in 1953 when she served her foreign guests sandwiches filled with rubber chicken mixed with raisins & mayo. Many criticize her for that but it was the prototype recipe for rubber chicken & made vegans of the guests.
Many compare her to her great-great-grandmother Victoria & one can understand why she takes exception to that. Victoria was a notoriously reclusive & prudish person whose name was given to those unpleasant souls with a pole stuck up their butts. The greatest likeness is in countenance since both appear to need prunes as a dietary supplement.
Betty is patron of more than 620 charities. There’s no largesse involved. It just means she goes hand-waving for them every once in a while.
Photo is Betty at one of her hand-waving gigs in Scotland where many have called fraud over the recent elections sticking with the Commonwealth.
(Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)