Granted the distinction is a subtle one, but some people should not comment on politics until they can tell the difference between farce & electoral politics. The nomination of Thai “Princess” Ubolratana as a candidate for prime minister is actually more shameful than farcical. She’s a pop singer, game show host, soap opera star, & Instagrammer. More to the point, she hasn’t a single credential making her appropriate as a political candidate in a country with a military dictatorship & a monarchy. Politics are serious business, not spectacle. To show how serious her nomination was, the party nominating her withdrew it as soon as the current monarch (her brother) objected. Not the kind of political leadership needed to bring a junta to its knees.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn, in exile after being charged under Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, calls this “the politics of the sewer.”

https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/politics-of-the-sewer/?

This is to commemorate the hanging of Afzal Guru by the Indian State on February 9, 2013. Afzal Guru was a surrendered militant who wanted to lead a normal life. The Indian State, without any concrete evidence & with inadequate legal representation, hanged him in secret for the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. Omar Abdullah, who is trying to resurrect his image as a born-again champion of freedom, was India’s Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir at the time. The body of Afzal Guru is buried at Tihar jail in Delhi where he was hanged. His family are denied his body for respectful burial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

The anti-Assad crowd campaigning for US “humanitarian intervention” into Syria is really showing their rightwing character by campaigning for US intervention in Venezuela. When you endorse the bombing of civilians to oppose repressive regimes, you fall right into the trap of fascists, Stalinists, confusionists who reduce politics & war to “regime change operations.” But do the anti-Assad pro-war crowd really have to sell Palestinians down the river by endorsing the Zionist views of Financial Times writer Philip Stephens who denounced Palestinians for extremist violence in order to make the case for US intervention into Venezuela? Have they no shame? Have they no concern about the hundreds of thousands of civilians who will be harmed by war? Have they so little damn sense that they trust the US Pentagon & the presidency of Trump? Beware the clarion call for war.

This photo is a protest in Caracas on February 2nd against Maduro’s policies. Protesting against Maduro is not an endorsement of US military intervention. It is Venezuelans exercising their right to oppose government policies that impose repression & austerity on them. It should also be said that protesting for Guaido is not an endorsement of US intervention but speaks to the bankruptcy of electoral options in Venezuelan politics.

(Photo by Meridith Kohut/NY Times)

This is a long but quite good Australian documentary about Israel’s abuse & torture of Palestinian children. It has its weaknesses, in particular the ending which equates Palestinian resistance with revenge that could lead to undefined extremism. It features Zionist Daniella Weiss, a leader of the settler movement, claiming Israel was promised by God to Jews so Palestinians will have to be systematically removed one way or another. Weiss is the daughter of two American Zionists who were part of the Stern Gang, a paramilitary terrorist group that sought alliances with fascist Italy & Nazi Germany in order to set up a “new totalitarian Hebrew republic” in Palestine.

https://vimeo.com/86575949?

Another Kashmiri ridiculing those throngs of swooning Kashmiris that Modi was waving at on Dal Lake:

Let me tell you another reason why I don’t truck with the Democratic Party & just so you know, my grudges go back a long way so I’ve had time to nurse & cultivate them to high dudgeon. I worked my way through college, partly on the university work-study program. In about 1968, I had a work-study job at a Black housing project in Minneapolis. At the tail-end of the Civil Rights Movement & in the Black Power phase, housing was (& still is) segregated. My job was with a group of little kids but there was no place for me to take them, no toys, balls, or games, nothing to keep them engaged.

At the time, I lived with an elderly woman & provided security & housekeeping in exchange for room & board. Her house was in an exclusive area of Minneapolis near the University & the housing project was just a few blocks away. She had once been head of the Minnesota Democratic Party (DFL) & still had social affairs at her home with all the DFL politicians. She was the biggest snob I’ve ever met in my life with utter disdain for working people. But she had a great big unused yard & if I walked the kids a few blocks & cut through the bushes we could use her yard at least for story-telling since we had no other equipment.

They were great little kids, entirely well-mannered, but since they were poor were somewhat intimidated when we entered the exclusive enclave. It was just the only place nearby where I could take them & where we could all be comfortable. It never dawned on me that their presence would offend Mrs. Harding. But her snobbery rose to its full measure & in a state of horror & near-apoplexy she said the kids absolutely could not be in her yard. They weren’t noisy, weren’t tearing up the grass, weren’t throwing balls. They were just sitting with me listening to stories & chatting. But they were little Black kids & I knew that’s what bothered her. Nothing ruins a relationship with me faster than crapping on little kids so our arrangement didn’t last much longer & despite the no-rent situation I moved on. Fifty years later I’m still nursing that grudge. When I think of those little kids, I anticipate I’ll go to the grave with it.

Just a reminder for those in the NYC area that today & tomorrow Rohingya activists & their supporters are meeting at Barnard College where they will issue a call for an international boycott of Burma for genocide against the Rohingya people. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of history in building solidarity.

https://www.facebook.com/mahmoud.abusaleh.98/posts/1045316895675031

More photos of todays Great Return March in Gaza showing how Israeli snipers directly target the young, including small children. It is exactly what Kashmiri protesters face. Injured or executed children are not the result of stray bullets or what the US Pentagon calls “collateral damage” but are the intended targets so as to disable, disfigure, & demoralize the young & make them passive against brutal occupations.

https://www.facebook.com/younes.arar/posts/10158233918715760

Photos from today’s Great Return March in Gaza: Walid Mahmoud from Gaza pointed out that during the Great Return Marches of nearly one year, Israel has killed journalists, nurses, women, volunteers, children, young men, elderly, students, disabled, but we have not heard once that the unarmed peaceful Palestinian protesters have killed or wounded one Israeli soldier or citizen.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Palestine.

Kashmiris are having a field day mocking media reports about Modi’s recent visit to Kashmir. He was photographed on a boat in Dal Lake waving as if to the assembled throng when there wasn’t a soul in sight. One headline read “PM Narendra Modi steals J&K’s hearts with his Kashmiri speech, tours Dal Lake in Srinagar.” In fact, in protest of his visit, there was a complete shutdown in Kashmir, everything was at a halt, & there probably wasn’t a soul in the streets either. The headline should have read “Modi went to Kashmir & everything his propagandists & generals told him about his popularity was a lie.”

Go back India, go back!